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THE 



VINE OUT OF EGYPT 



The Growth and Development of the 
American Episcopal Church 

WITH 

SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE CHURCH LIFE 
OF THE FUTURE 



by y 

WM. WILBERFORCE NEWTON 

AUTHOR OF "ESSAYS OF TO-DAY," " PRIEST AND MAN," "SUMMER 
SERMONS," ETC. 



" Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: Thou madest room for 
it; and when it had taken root, it filled the land." — Ps. lxxx. 8, 9. 



NEW YORK: 
THOMAS W H I T T A K E R 

2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE 

I887 y<^ 



w OCT 1 2 1887" 
fry^33^d 




^ 



# 



& 

■^ 



COPYRIGHT, 1887, 

By THOMAS WHTTTAKER. 



FRANKLIN PRESS '. 

RAND AVERY COMPANY, 

BOSTON. 



&o tj)£ JHemorg of 
MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER, 

WHO, ENTERING TOGETHER INTO THE REST OF PARADISE, 

HAVE LEFT TO THEIR CHILDREN THE PRICELESS 

RECORD OF THEIR LIFE OF FAITH, 

STfjt'g Book tg Eeberentlg Geoicateo, 

IN" THE HOPE THAT THEY WHO ARE NOW OUR CHILDREN 

MAT ONE DAT RISE UP LN LIKE MANNER TO CALL 

US BLESSED, AS THEY WALK IN THE OLD 

PATHS IN WHICH OUR FATHERS TROD. 



Te who have gained at length your palms in bliss, 
Victorious ones, your chant shall still be this, — 
An endless Alleluia ! " 



PEEFACE. 



It is given to the men of each generation to make 
some special contribution to the problems which con- 
front them, and having done their share, to round 
the curve in the journey of life, leaving their work 
behind. 

The following papers are the honest effort of one, 
who, believing in the unity of spirit in the bond of 
peace, has tried to show the wealth of heritage be- 
stowed upon the Church by our fathers, in the hope 
that it may give us, at a moment when the American 
nation needs an American Church, largeness of heart 
and a generous chivalry towards our brethren of other 
folds who kneel in loyal homage to our common Lord 
and Master, — the divinely human Christ. 

PlTTSFIELD, MA88. 

Feast of the Transfiguration, 
Aug. 6, 1887. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEB PAGE 

I, THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT . . 7 

II. THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT ... 69 

III. THE PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT 106 

IV. GROUNDS OF CHURCH UNITY 126 

V. AN APPEAL TO THE CHURCH OF OUR 

FATHERS 140 

APPENDIX. 

THE ACTION OF THE HOUSE OF BISHOPS . . 151 



VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT, 

I. THE MISSION AND MEANING- OF THE EVANGELICAL 
PARTY. 

I wish to speak in this book of the growth and 
development of the Episcopal Church in America, 
with special reference to the subject of the Church- 
life of the future. 

To those who have believed in God's care over 
the Church of yesterday, and who, in recognizing 
His hand in the inspiration of human character 
to-day, believe in the Church that is to be, this 
series of studies, as an offering towards peace in 
truth and righteousness, is dedicated. 

To get a careful hearing is all that I hope for in 
this work. There are times when peace comes 
only through the sword-thrusts of opposition, and 



8 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

when the fittest survives over the body of the 
slain. If what is said is unworthy of survival, 
may it perish quickly ; but if there is reason in it, 
and if it is the echo of forgotten voices, may it 
have a hearing for the sake of those who, in the 
spirit of prophecy, foresaw this surely coming 
day. 

The problem before our composite Church-life 
to-day, is the problem of making useful and full 
of power the rich inheritance of knowledge and 
experience bequeathed to us by our forefathers. 
We live in a dear old homestead, which has been 
full of life and activity, and is to-day filled with 
many memories. Brothers and sisters have been 
reared in it, and have gone forth to make varying 
alliances, and to accomplish many widespread and 
opposite results in the outer world. 

Back from the world's ever-widening broadway 
it stands; yet its ancient gateway leads directly 
to the highway of modern thought and life. It 
speaks to us by its antique structure of by-gone 
methods of architecture ; yet where can we find 
such solid comfort in any of the new-fashioned 
homes of to-day? It speaks by its whole air of 
yesterday of the wisdom and experience of the 
past; but the inmates of the old homestead are 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 9 

young and active children of the present. The 
belongings of bygone relatives are found here, — 
the silver, the furniture, the pictures, and the dra- 
peries of the generations that have lived in it, — 
but the methods of the present householders are 
the methods of to-day. In other words, this 
Church of ours in this new land of ours has in- 
herited the wisdom and experience of those who 
helped to make it what it is, and who builded 
better than they knew. Call it not a family quar- 
rel, this strife of bygone ancestors. It was never 
this, though in days gone by it may have looked 
like it. While other forms of faith are perishing at 
the first hard conflict of bygone methods with new- 
found experiences, we are living unharmed and un- 
scathed, because our fathers struggled to have in 
our homestead, room enough for a very large fam- 
ily of very active children. 

In this first chapter on " The Ecclesiastical De- 
velopment of the Episcopal Church," I propose to 
speak of three aspects of the marked growth of 
this Church. I shall divide the subject into three 
parts : — 

I. The meaning and mission of the Evangel- 
ical party. 



10 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

ii. The value and power of the High Church 
position. 

in. The work and influence of the Broad 
Church school. 

Before considering these, let me make emphatic 
the words here chosen. The first division of the 
Church is described as a " party." The second 
division is defined as a "position." The third 
division is named as an " influence." 

The meaning and mission of the old Evangel- 
ical party is found in the twofold fact, first, that 
it defended liberty of prophesying, or the prin- 
ciple of voluntariness in worship and in giving; 
and, second, that it stood for the constitutional 
conception of the Episcopate, or the supremacy 
•of canonical over personal authority. These were 
two great gifts wrung out of a long struggle 
and a stiff conscience. We are the children of 
these men who fought for principle, and have 
given us the heritage, which they won at the point 
of the sword. The strife is over now, and the 
smoke has cleared away. In a household of faith 
which is at unity with itself, ■ we can afford to look 
at these bygone days in the calm attitude of a 
peace which has been won. 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 11 

These ''Evangelicals,'* or low churchmen, were 
the direct descendants of the English school of Cecil 
and Simeon and Romaine. Their great names on 
the other side of the water were Venn and Bick- 
ersteth, Leigh Richmond, Wilberforce, and John 
Newton. They brought into the cold and dead 
English Church the spiritual illumination of Wes- 
ley and Whitefield and the Methodist awakening. 

Among the lectures named in the will of Wil- 
liam Price, the founder of " The Price Lectures " 
in Trinity Church, Boston, is .one against enthusi- 
asm, by which, curiously enough, was meant this 
same spirit of individual conviction or personal 
zeal in the Christian life. 

These Evangelicals, or low churchmen, were 
scattered through the country. They were strong 
in Philadelphia and in the Middle States. They 
were a power in Virginia and South Carolina, 
where their theology took a strong Calvinistic 
turn, which reconciled them to slavery as one of 
the divine decrees, and there was a scattering of 
them in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Their 
great names are a tower of spiritual strength to-day, 
and are a pride and glory to the Church in any 
age. Dr. John A. Stone, Dr. Dyer, Dr. Stephen 
H. Tyng, Dr. Milnor, Bishop Griswold, Dr. An- 



12 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

drews of Virginia, John A. Clark, William Ridge- 
ley, the brilliant pamphleteer and editor, Bishop 
Chase with his Kenyon College scheme, Bishop 
Mcllvaine with his " Oxford Divinity " and his 
warm welcome upon English shores, Bishop East- 
burn with his uncompromising hostility to sacra- 
mental error of doctrine, Rev. Charles D. Cooper 
with his evangelical fervor, Bishop Lee, our late 
presiding bishop, and one just taken from his 
loved circle, whose vigor of faith is living over 
again in the lives of unnumbered little ones to 
whom he had in his later years ministered, together 
with Hoffman the missionary, and Parvin and 
Rising, the heads of the two great institutions of 
this phase of the Church's life, are a legacy of 
power, which is a gift to any church. And with 
these honored names comes the memory of one 
who threw the broad shield of his massive great- 
ness over this development of the Church's life, 
whose intellectual breadth was subordinated to 
his spiritual convictions, and who covered the 
retreat of the Evangelicals after the Cummins 
movement, — Alexander Hamilton Vinton. The 
intensity of feeling in the days which came after 
Tract No. 90 had been published at Oxford it is 
difficult at present to imagine or describe. 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 13 

As a child I can remember the ministers' gath- 
erings at the dear old Front-street residence of 
the then rector of St. Paul's Church, Philadelphia. 
These men came from Delaware and New Jersey 
and from the interior of Pennsylvania. They 
came by stage and by steamboat and by rail, and 
they had many hours together of earnest prayer 
and discussion. There were petitions and declara- 
tions and appeals and manifestoes in abundance. 

" The Episcopal Recorder " and " The Banner of 
the Cross" waged a bitter and unrelenting war of 
extreme partisanship. As an illustration of this 
widespread feeling of party spirit let me quote an 
incident which occurred at the election of Rev. 
Alonzo Potter, D.D., in the year 1845. The Con- 
vention was held in St. Andrew's Church, Phila- 
delphia. Ballot after ballot was cast with no 
result. Rev. Dr. Tyng, then rector of the Church 
of the Epiphany, missed the election at every bal- 
lot by a few scattering votes. After he had arisen 
and withdrawn his name, Dr. Potter of Union 
College, Schenectady, was nominated. As the bal- 
lots were counted out in open session, the entire 
congregation could keep the score by marking with 
a pencil the votes for the different candidates. 
When at 'last the critical figure was reached and 



14 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

passed on the long column of votes, and Dr. Pot- 
ter had received the majority and was elected, an 
old colored woman in the gallery reached forward, 
and, clapping her hands, exclaimed, " He's got it ! 
He's got it! Bress de Lord. Now we'll have no 
more Pussem — is — im." But this election of Dr. 
Potter in Philadelphia was a greater triumph for 
the best interests of the Church at large than the 
Evangelicals of that day could admit, suffering as 
they were under their defeat with Dr. Tyng. 

It was the beginning of a new conception of the 
duties and responsibilities of the Episcopate, and 
in so far was the realization, in part, of that for 
which the Evangelical part}^ had been striving. 

It would seem, at first sight, as if it were a fore- 
gone conclusion that if any thing remained after 
the Evangelical party had done its work, it would 
be its radical, and yet, in a certain sense, its 
strong, theology. This theology was the old 
Augustinian theology, which had survived the 
period of the Reformation, and had taken a new 
and practical turn during the great awakening of 
Methodism. Perhaps in no single ministry was 
this peculiar theology so strongly marked by the 
opposition which was vouchsafed to it, and the an- 
tagonistic influence which it exerted, as in the 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 15 

ministry of Bishop Eastburn, in Massachusetts. 
His Boston hearers and Beacon-street parishioners 
strongly objected to the uniform phraseology of 
Trinity-church pulpit, in which they were con- 
stantly addressed as worms, vile sinners, and chil- 
dren of wrath. The conventional " miserable 
sinners " of the Litany was one thing to these 
Boston church-goers ; the copious repertoire of 
Evangelical phrases from the pulpit, in which 
these worshippers were classed with convicts, was 
quite another thing. It was this feature of mal- 
assimilation with the New-England mind in Bishop 
Eastburn's character and career, which Dr. Vinton 
analyzed in his celebrated funeral sermon upon 
the second Bishop of Massachusetts. This lack of 
adaptability of the vital principle of Christianity 
to the conditions and wants of a changing age, as 
seen in such an experience as that of Bishop East- 
burn's, would form a strong answer to the position 
which John Foster has taken in his once famous 
essay on " The Aversion of Men of Taste to Evan- 
gelical Religion." But it was in the essential 
nature of things that there should be an inherent 
and necessary protest in the fresh hearts of a new 
generation against the fundamental principles of 
the Evangelical theology. It was not its profound 



16 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

views of human sin, or of the necessity of a Saviour, 
or of the unalterable distinction between right and 
wrong, which brought to bear upon the standards 
and system of the Evangelicals the opposition of 
the generation which came after them. It was 
something quite distinct from this merely theologi- 
cal structure of their creed, which caused the chil- 
dren to avoid the theology of their fathers, and 
develop 1 a new one, fitted to the wants of their 
special age. The secret of the fall of this school 
of thought was -found rather in the fact that the 
practical, systematic, almost commercial, view of 
theology which was preached, was found to be in- 
adequate to the wants of the human heart, and 
was not deep and profound enough in its grasp 
of thought for the intricate recesses of human life 
and character. The " simple gospel," the " clear 
views," justification by faith, the commercial 
conception of the covenant, of the blood of recon- 
ciliation, of the Anselmic atonement, of the Cal- 
vinistic election, and of a stronger than Tridentine 
theory of future punishment, hell and retribu- 
tion, stronger than the statement of Trent, be- 
cause the Council of Trent furnished a convenient 
outlet in the doctrine of purgatory, while any escape 
from perdition was to the Evangelicals unknown, 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 17 

were doctrines which could not last beyond the 
strength of the individual convictions which main- 
tained them. This structure of thought was the 
fashion of the religious mind of that day ; but this 
theological mould could not produce the form of 
thought for the age which was to come after it. 
The key-note to all this radical theology of the 
Evangelical party was found in the word " satis- 
faction." The divine nature was satisfied by the 
Atonement of Christ. This was enough; more 
than this could not be desired or expected. Hu- 
man nature, therefore, ought to be satisfied with 
this simple gospel, since the divine nature was satis- 
fied with this its own foreordained plan and decree. 
An infant-school teacher in one of these churches, 
rejoiced in the fact that her scholars, all under six 
years of age, could separately and individually 
state clearly and explicitly, in theological terms, 
the entire plan of salvation. This central thought 
of satisfaction showed itself in many curious ways. 
It raised party zeal to the high pitch of religious 
fanaticism. Not to vote with this party in any 
councils or conventions of the Church, was of the 
nature of a moral wrong, for Sacramentalism was 
always deadly error, and Evangelicalism always 
stood for clear views of truth. It showed itself in 



18 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

a strange and subtle way in the architecture of this 
phase of the Church's life. With the rise and 
progress of the Evangelical party there appeared 
a strange renaissance of pagan temples. The 
Parthenon at Athens, the temples of Jupiter and 
Bacchus and Apollo, appeared in brick and 
plaster, with sanded columns of the Ionic, Doric, 
and Corinthian orders. Carved Bacchantes formed 
the communion-rail of a certain church in Phila- 
delphia built on the heathen model of a temple of 
Bacchus, with imitation iron wine-butts for the gas 
chandeliers. It is difficult to find the connecting- 
link between this revival of pagan architecture and 
the rise of the Evangelical school of thought and 
life. But Robertson, in his striking essay on Words- 
worth, throws no little light upon this curious con- 
junction. The Grecian temple, he says, always 
stood, with its straight lines, rectangular form, and 
square, flat roof, for the thought of pagan satisfac- 
tion. The Gothic building, with its tapering 
tower, and its vaulted arches reaching into the 
dim roof, stood for the thought of Christian aspi- 
ration. The pagan temple of the Greeks meant 
completion, satisfaction, and definiteness of creed. 
The pointed arch of the Gothic architecture, with 
its tapering finger reaching up amid the clouds, 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 19 

meant mystery, aspiration, and devout meditation. 
Curiously enough, this position was realized in the 
architectural expression of these two schools of 
thought in the Church. While the Evangelicals 
were seeking to make their church-buildings give 
expression to the thought of theological satisfac- 
tion, their High-church, or Anglican, brethren were 
turning every thing they could lay their hands upon 
into the mould of the Gothic arch and the Norman 
tower. But let us return to the direct subject be- 
fore us. 

I have said that the men who were the leaders of 
the Evangelical school of thought, stood for two 
practical principles in our common Church-life, 
after they had made their party witness to what 
they called the simple gospel. They did not hand 
down as their heritage to the Church which was to 
come after them, the direct gift of their systematic 
theology, or their so-called simple- gospel. They 
left us, instead of this, two distinct but indirect 
gifts as the result of their struggles and experience. 

The first of these gifts was liberty of. prophesy- 
ing, or the principle of voluntariness in worship. 
Perhaps we do not realize now the deep philosophy 
which was underlying this plea of the Evangelical, 
for the liberty of extemporaneousness in worship. 



20 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

It was the stifled cry of the mystic, which went up 
from the soul to God, outside the channel of priest 
or Prayer Book, or sacrament. The Church has 
never lacked its mystics, and the mystics have 
never failed to bring a blessing to the Church in 
every age. These men were the mystics of our 
Church, and a deep and irrepressible conviction 
nerved their spirits to be valiant for the truth in 
their day and generation. They had meetings in 
"groves." They had associations or revivals of 
religion, which were to them, what their missions 
are to the ritualists of to-day. They had after- 
noon prayer-meetings in their churches, where 
robes were not allowed to be worn, but into which, 
at the same time, no mere Gallio-kind-of-seedling- 
young-broad-churchmen were admitted, who came 
with secular black cravats, instead of the regula- 
tion white tie. They believed that they had a 
right at times to use extemporaneous prayers. 
They believed they had the right to give their 
money where they chose, and not through the 
agency which boards or bishops decreed should be 
the only channel. Under this conviction there 
sprang into life those three great institutions which 
attracted to themselves the generous gifts of many 
rich and influential laymen, — "The Evangelical 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 21 

Knowledge Society," " The American Church 
Missionary Society," and " The Evangelical Edu- 
cation Society." 

The right of extemporaneous prayer, which our 
ritualistic brethren to-day rejoice in, was won for 
them by the efforts of their brethren on the left 
wing of the Church's life. Bishop Doane of 
New Jersey, in his home at Burlington, forbade 
these meetings in the grove, and issued a pamph- 
let against such free gatherings. To this the 
Rev. Simeon Wilmer replied vigorously in another 
pamphlet. The Rev. Benjamin Allen, then rec- 
tor of St. Paul's, Philadelphia, declared, like his 
illustrious namesake at Ticonderoga, that " in the 
name of the great Jehovah " they would stand 
upon the rightfulness of the liberty of prophesy- 
ing, until they stood before the judgment bar of 
God. And thus it came to pass that out of this 
principle of liberty of prophesying, there grew the 
other principle for which these men contended; 
viz., the constitutional conception of the Episco- 
pate, or the supremacy of canonical over personal 
authority. These men did not dislike the word 
" Bishop," but they objected strongly to the word 
" Prelate." When they thought of a bishop, they 
thought of Cranmer ; when they thought of a 



22 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

prelate, their minds reverted to Laud. This dis- 
tinction culminated in that saddest of all episodes, 
the famous Cheney trial in Chicago, where the out- 
lawed presbyter stood for the old spirit of the 
Puritan commonwealth, and where the temper of 
the bishop was the Laudean spirit reproduced in 
history. But the prelatical view of the Episcopate 
experienced a rude shock in the trials of the 
bishops of that period, no less than four bishops 
suffering at the hands of their canonical authorities. 
From this cyclone of judicial wrath, Prelacy in the 
American Church has never recovered. With the 
election of Dr. Alonzo Potter, however, was ush- 
ered in the era of the constitutional Episcopate. 
Prelacy has virtually disappeared, and these, reso- 
lute, indomitable Evangelicals helped more than 
any other set of men to bring about this great re- 
sult. They answered back with fire and with con- 
viction whenever a bishop, or a board, or a machine 
in Church politics tried to suppress them with a 
mere ipse dixit. They would obey canonical au- 
thority, not mere personal opinion shaped in the 
official setting of authority. They would obey the 
law of the Church, but it must be clearly marked 
as canon law ; it must not be mere prerogative or 
tradition. And surely this was a great gift to the 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 23 

Church, — a gift which has shown itself in the ris- 
ing power and influence of our later House of Bish- 
ops. It is Moberly, in his Bampton Lectures of 
1868 on "The Administration of the Spirit," who 
uses these words : " The practice of the Episco- 
pal Church in the United States, and now happily 
introduced in some of our own colonial dioceses, 
in respect of the election of bishops, seems to 
approach more nearly than that of any other por- 
tion of the Catholic Church to the primitive model 
described by Cyprian." 1 To the Evangelicals be- 
longs the praise of insisting upon the election of 
men of power, of conscience, and of constitutional 
fitness. They stood out for a great principle against 
all mere time-serving policy. They carried their 
conscience into the matter of Episcopal elections, 
and in this way they rescued the Church from 
ecclesiastical tradition and mere official institu- 
tionalism. Their faith stood to them for every 
thing ; and they carried that faith with them to the 
highest tribunal of the Church. 

1 have by my side, as I write, a leaflet entitled 
"Is the Child Dead?" It was written by the 
Rev. G. W. Ridgeley not long before his death, 
and is the last of his long line of brilliant edi- 

1 The Administration of the Spirit, note H. H. H., p. 201. 



24 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

torials and pamphlets. It begins as follows : " It 
is reported on Episcopal authority, almost equal 
to that of the Vatican, that a little pet of mine 
called ' Evangelical ' is dead — dead — dead. I 
weep as I write. Pardon the perturbations of 
grief. I hope there is some mistake about the 
matter, and that he has merely strayed away for 
a time. I am very fond of the little fellow, and 
pray you to aid me in securing all possible in- 
formation concerning him." It is pathetic to see 
an old man like this in search of a lost child. It 
makes us think of old Peggotty going in search of 
his stolen ward. But the child is not dead. It 
is the Spiritual Father of the manhood of the 
Church of to-day. It is true the child can no 
longer be found ; but the child's children rise up 
to call the Parent blessed. In Dr. Mulford's 
interesting book, " The Nation," there are two 
striking chapters which have an application here. 
In one of these he describes the nation as the 
antagonist of the Confederacy. In the other, he 
describes it as the antagonist of the Empire. 
This Episcopal Church of ours to-day is the direct 
antagonist of the sect idea, of the mere con- 
federate conception of the Church, and it is at 
the same time the antagonist of the autocracy 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 25 

idea, or the empireship of prelatical Rome. But 
it has come through a great struggle to secure this 
toleration, and can cry with the soul which 
Dante saw in Paradise, — 

" I came from martyrdom unto this Peace." 

This old Evangelical party has had a meaning, 
and has done a mission. It stood for a bold and 
simple conception of the Christian faith, and was 
ready to die for its faith like any of the martyrs. 
And though the theology it fought for has 
changed its form of expression, in a new and un- 
foreseen age, the two great results of the struggle 
of these men of faith remain to us as a precious 
heritage. And these are, liberty of prophesy- 
ing, or the voluntary principle in worship and in 
giving ; and the constitutional conception of the 
Episcopate, or the supremacy of canonical over 
personal authority. 

II. THE VALUE AND POWER OF THE HTQ-H CHURCH 
POSITION. 

Value and power are terms of political econ- 
omy. It is with something of this same utili- 
tarian sense, that I find myself using these words, 
as the fittest explanation which comes to hand, 



26 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

whereby to translate into simple language the 
results of the teaching and influence of the High 
Church party. The earlier Evangelicals con- 
fidently supposed that it would be their clear views 
of simple truth which would remain as the work of 
their life-long protest. But the theology of the 
Evangelicals has passed away, and that which re- 
mains as the result of their work, is the twofold 
gift of liberty of prophesying and the constitutional 
conception of the Episcopate. The earlier high 
churchmen, in the same way, supposed that it 
would be their testimony to Church order and the 
efficacy of sacramental grace, which would remain 
after they themselves had passed away. But, 
curiously enough, the gift of these zealous church- 
men to the churchmanship of to-day, comes to us 
as a heritage of method, rather than a heritage of 
creed. The element which survives the death of 
these workmen is not so much a sacramental 
theology as it is an ecclesiastical polity. This 
subtle experience of the happening of " the un- 
expected," is the truthfulness of the principle 
contained in Robertson's remarkable sermon about 
the illusiveness of life. The high principles 
which we defend, and the high ideals we strive 
for, are illusive, not delusive. We strive for 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 27 

something, and get, not the thing we strive for, 
but a reality which is better, after all, than the 
object of our search; just as children romp and 
frolic on the playground, and secure, not the game 
won every time, but health and strength obtained 
by the exercise, which is Nature's illusive way of 
developing their powers. In the same way the 
zealous high churchmen strove to make the 
Church inherit their stalwart views of sacramen- 
tal grace. That which we find they really did 
bequeath to the Church, as the result of their teach- 
ing and experience, was not a body of theology, 
but an ecclesiastical polity. They left to the 
Church of the present, as the result of their 
labors, two great gifts. And these gifts are (1) 
the value of ecclesiastical over theological uni- 
formity ; and (2) the objective sacraments, rather 
than the subjective emotions, as the standard of 
the Church's life. 

So, then, we can rightfully name the legacy of 
this strong school of Church life and thought " the 
value and power of the High Church position." 
It was a position which these men took ; and this 
position had a value, and is to-day a poiver. It is 
Lucock, in his studies of the Prayer Book, who 
takes the ground that the Church has grown from 



28 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

the moment it took a positive position and vig- 
orously asserted itself. There were bishops in the 
American Church who were pious, pure-minded, 
respectable gentlemen, hard-headed Tories, and 
moderate churchmen. But there was no one who 
advanced the Church-idea with such relentless 
persistence, as that defender of the faith, and ad- 
vocate of Church doctrine, order, and discipline, 
in whom centred the glory of the High Church 
party — Bishop John Henry Hobart of New York. 
There is a time to push principles, and a time to 
wait and let them quietly develop by their own 
inherent powers. Bishop Hobart was born at a 
period when the Church needed a vigorous ad- 
vocate to secure for it a retaining-point among 
the flowering and blossoming religious faiths of 
the day. He did his aggressive work in a man- 
ner worthy of the zeal of the Jesuits in North 
America, whom our historian, Parkman, has so 
graphically described. He was no mere ecclesi- 
astical functionary. He was a great and living 
power. There were bishops around him who were 
men of ease and culture, who took life easily. The 
painful controversy with Bishop Provoost, in 
which the young bishop was supported by his di- 
ocesan convention, shows the opposition which any 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 29 

new departure in Church-life was sure at that day 
to engender. But Bishop Hobart went, like Ber- 
nard of old, preaching his crusade ; and the clergy 
and laity of his diocese caught his spirit, and fol- 
lowed in the same aggressive trail. Bible socie- 
ties, tract societies, union movements, charities, 
philanthropies, and all that class of work, were 
with him secondary to the great task of preaching 
the divine mission of the Church, which, by a 
variety of metaphors, met a variety of human 
wants. At one moment it was the ark of safety ; 
at another moment it was the pillar and ground 
of the faith. But it was always the one thing 
which the crude and ill-compacted country needed, 
— the one thing which, by a divine commission, was 
laid upon its ministers to propagate. Bishop Wil- 
berforce, in his history of the Church in America, 
thus emphasizes the work and influence of this 
representative bishop : " Hobart was a man who, 
at any time, would have left on his communion an 
impress of his own character. In the unformed 
state of institutions and opinions in that land, it 
could not fail of being deeply and broadly marked. 
. . . It is clear that he was raised up to do a 
special work, to consolidate and bind together the 
loose and crumbling mass, to raise the general tone, 



30 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

to animate their zeal, to save them from the fatal 
apathy into which they were subsiding." 1 

A reviewer of Mozley's reminiscences in " The 
Nation" of Oct. 12, 1882, speaks as follows of 
the conjunction of the hour and the man in the 
Oxford movement of Newman's. The time had 
come to advance a certain view of Church-life ; 
and by a law which we see continually at work 
around us, the hour and the man came together. 

" A Church like the Anglican communion, based 
on endless compromises between Catholicism and 
Protestantism, — compromises which are the result 
neither of logic nor of religious conviction, but of 
historical and political considerations, — is spe- 
cially liable to become the field for the unexpected 
production of religious developments. An im- 
pressive preacher or thinker pushes to its log- 
ical conclusion one side of the Church's multifa- 
rious and not over-consistent doctrines. He means 
simply to give effect to the Church's true teach- 
ing. He, and still more his disciples, become, 
without meaning it, ecclesiastical revolutionists. 
Whitgift and Laud, Wesley, Simeon, Newman, 
and Arnold each and all believed themselves to 

1 History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, by 
Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. London Edition, 1856 ; pp. 298-306. 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 31 

be expounders of the doctrines of the Church of 
England. They each, as far as their influence 
extended, disturbed the practical compromise, 
which, if not exactly the Church's true doctrine, 
is its true reason for existence. If there were to 
be a High Church revival, any one who knows 
England may confidently assert that Oxford was, 
in 1832, its appropriate home. The truth is, that 
the English universities, and especially Oxford, 
are, whatever their defects or merits, created, so 
to speak, to be the centre of movements. There 
are at the universities collected, teachers and think- 
ers who, despite the popular prejudice against dons 
or professors, are constantly men of great talent, 
of impressive character, and of that kind of dis- 
interestedness which, even more than cleverness 
or energy, enlists the enthusiasm of youth. To 
any one who has realized how large is the amount 
of intellect, of learning, and even of originality 
which lies hid in the English universities, the true 
difficulty is to account, not for the extent of the 
influence exerted by Oxford or Cambridge, but 
for that influence not having become as marked, 
at least, as the weight exercised in modern Ger- 
many, by the political and theological teaching 
of professors. For not only have there never — 



32 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

certainly for the last fifty years, and probably 
for a much longer period — been lacking at Ox- 
ford teachers pre-eminently fitted to impress their 
hearers, but the college system, with its curious 
combination of freedom with discipline, of intimate 
association with individual independence, brings 
young men together in such a manner as to render 
them specially sensitive to the authority of teachers 
who are, for the most part, still young enough 
not to be separated, by great difference of age, 
from the sympathies of their pupils. A sincere 
and enthusiastic believer in Mormonism — could 
such a person become the leading tutor, say of 
New College, of Oriel, or of Balliol — would, we 
are well assured, soon organize a Mormon move- 
ment, and alarm respectable society by inducing 
hundreds of young men to set sail for Utah. Early 
Evangelicalism had no such attraction for the 
clergy. The converted layman stood in the same 
position as the converted priest; or, rather, the 
priest was not priest at all, but, on the Evangel- 
ical view, a preacher of truth ; and, as such, on 
the same footing as a dissenting minister who 
preached the same doctrine. The liberal teach- 
ing of the Broad Church may, to a certain ex- 
tent, lighten the burden of clerical subscription. 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 33 

It may teach clergymen that they have a moral 
and religious advantage in belonging to a State 
Church, but it does not tend to raise the dignity 
or the influence of the clerical order. High Church 
doctrine, on the other hand, whatever its worth, 
both increases the dignity of the clergy, and, in 
the mouth at any rate of teachers like Newman 
and Pusey, invites clergymen to play a prominent 
part in the moral, the religious, and even the po- 
litical life of England. ' Has not the Church,' 
said Sterling, 4 in every parish its black dragoon ? ' 
There is no need to adopt the description sug- 
gested by the intemperate eloquence of the 
youthful orator, who was haranguing a debating 
society of youths ; but persons who know that the 
4 black dragoon ' is generally an excellent gentle- 
man, engaged in the earnest discharge of hard 
and ill-paid duties, may nevertheless admit that 
Sterling laid his finger on a most important fact. 
In every parish there is a man who must, from 
the nature of things, be apt to adopt High Church 
doctrine. We may fairly say that in half the par- 
ishes of England, the Tractarians found ready- 
made missionaries. The instruments for affecting 
public opinion, lay ready to the hands of the Pusey- 
ite leaders. They used these instruments ( and no 



34: VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

blame to them for it) with the energy of men 
filled with confidence in themselves and in their 
cause. No one can wonder that the movement 
spread, during its earlier years, with astounding 
rapidity." 

The same may be said of the diocese of New 
York, at the time when Bishop Hobart was its 
head (1811 to 1830). The place, the hour, and 
the man joined hands in a concerted movement. 
The time had come to push "Church-positions;" 
and these principles were advanced with the en- 
ergy of an attacking party in the field of battle. 
Charles Kingsley says, in one of his letters, " No 
human power ever beat back a resolute, forlorn 
hope. To be got rid of, they must be blown back 
with grape and canister, because the attacking 
party have all the universe behind them ; the de- 
fence, only that small part which is shut up in 
walls." 

To Bishop Hobart belongs the honor of leading 
the Church out of its mere routine barrack life, 
and of making a charge upon a credulous and un- 
believing land. There were many others with him 
who shared in this movement. But Bishop Hobart 
was facile princeps in this advance which began 
to make the despised Episcopal Church a national 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 35 

Church, and no longer a mere social transplant 
from the aristocratic life of England. These 
high churchmen who preached sacramental grace, 
and baptismal regeneration, and apostolical succes- 
sion, were quite as marked by their convictions as 
their rival Evangelical brethren. They fasted 
heavily in Lent. They dressed with long black 
coats buttoning up to the chin. They abhorred 
Evangelicalism, and knew nothing as yet of Ritu- 
alism. The cut of their clothes, and their surplices, 
was according to an ecclesiological pattern, which 
had been evolved out of logical syllogisms, not 
out of esthetic principles. Their churches all bud- 
ded into Gothic angles and arches ; as, by the 
same law of architectural expression, we have seen 
that the churches of the Evangelicals took on the 
lines and form of pagan temples. The Gothic 
arch meant aspiration ; the rectangular temple 
meant satisfaction. Their walk in the street was 
angular and platoon-like. They sank their indi- 
vidualism in the Church's institutionalism, and 
grew in some strange way to look alike. Carlyle's 
philosophy of clothes in his "Sartor Resartus" 
applied to them. One could generalize from their 
outward covering what their internal, mental 
structure would be. Their dress became an out- 



36 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

ward expression of an inward set of reticulated 
convictions. They said " AA-men " and never 
" Amen," and always sang a certain set of churchly 
hymns and Gregorian tunes. They, and their 
clothes have mostly passed away now, or have 
emerged through a state of chrysalis into varie- 
gated Ritualists ; as the followers of the Evangel- 
icals, by the same mysterious process, have mounted 
on the restless wing of the Liberal, after the man- 
ner of the fully-developed dragon-fiy. But they 
have done their work, — a great work and a 
necessary work, — and they, too, have left us a 
valued heritage. 

An English review thus emphasizes the good 
work done by this school of Church-life in England : 
" Everybody now acknowledges heartily and grate- 
fully how much good the High Church movement 
has, in some directions, wrought ; how much more 
decorous are the services of the Episcopal Church ; 
how much better the music ; how much better the 
edifices ; how many zealous clergymen of this 
school are laboring among the poor in our great 
cities, spending themselves with a self-sacrifice un- 
dreamed of fifty years ago. The English have, 
more than most nations, a disposition to acquiesce 
in accomplished facts, and to believe that when 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 37 

any doctrine or school has established itself, it 
must have had a solid raison d'etre, and ought not 
to be interfered with. Hence the change of tone 
towards the Ritualists, the disposition to tolerate 
even the disobedience to constituted authority 
which some of them practice. It would be impos- 
sible now to pass the Public Worship Regulation 
Act which was passed in 1874; and the sympathy 
felt for Mr. Green, the clergyman who has been 
committed to prison for refusing to obey the court, 
which directed him to discontinue certain prac- 
tices in public worship to which he was conscien- 
tiously attached, is by no means confined to those 
extreme Ritualists who share his opinions. Thus 
it has happened that Dr. Pusey, from being the 
suspected and hated leader of a new party, has 
become accepted as an ornament of the whole 
Church of England, whose piety may be celebrated 
without any expression of sympathy for his doc- 
trines." (" The Nation," Nov. 23, 1882.) 

But that which remains after these workers have 
passed away is not the direct object for which they 
contended, but an indirect legacy of experience. 
The work of these men has indicated the power of 
the position which they took in advocating their 
favorite theories. The first gift they have uncon- 



38 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

sciously bestowed upon the Church which has 
come after them, is the realization, which the men 
of to-day see enforced upon all sides, of the value 
of ecclesiastical over theological uniformity. The 
polity of Presbyterianism seems cumbrous by the 
side of the successful working of a common-sense 
Episcopacy. It would be hard work to fight a 
campaign by a Presbytery of generals. Cromwell 
tried it, and finding it would not do, struck out at 
once into independency. To-day the burdensome 
polity and the enforced dogmatic teaching of the 
Presbyterian Church, alike warn the leaders of that 
great organization, that they must throw aside some 
of their outworn dogmas, the mere impedimenta 
of their forefathers' campaigns, or must lag behind 
in the march of the present, with its demand for 
vital truth alone ! The cumbrous system of rep- 
resentation in the Presbytery, the load of dogma 
carried down from generation to generation, the 
practical impossibility of teaching the Westminster 
Catechism* to the children of the present, show us 
how much wiser it is for a Church to unite upon a 
practical working-system, than upon the enforced 
interpretation of a theological statement. 

The struggle at present going on between the 
liberal and conservative wings of Congregation- 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 39 

alism, with an "Andover Review" upon one 
side, and a Tremont-temple lectureship upon the 
other, is another illustration of the weakness 
of theological uniformity, considered as a basis of 
Church-work, compared with the easier method 
of ecclesiastical conformity. 

It is brought home to our minds at every turn 
in the religious life of this land at present, that it 
is much easier and more practical for men of 
divergent theological temperament, to unite upon 
a method of Church-organization, rather than upon 
a definite creed carefully syncopated and analyzed. 

When our Congregational brethren come to- 
gether for any new movement, they first of all lay 
down the planks of their accepted creed. Some 
are old and some are new. Some planks are too 
short, and must be pieced ; others are too long, 
and must necessarily be sawed off; and altogether 
it is a difficult matter to make a satisfactory piece 
of work out of the proposed platform. 

When our Episcopal brethren come together, on 
the other hand, they can hold any interpretation 
of Christian doctrine, which can be squared within 
the compass of the apostles' creed ; and, without 
any suggestion whatsoever of theological uni- 
formity, they fall to the practical work before 



40 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

them with alacrity, and with no waste of time in 
discussing theology, and are united by a collect, 
or a rubric, or a bishop, if only one of these three 
requisites can be found. A policy is much better 
to unite upon for practical work than a creed ; and 
it is the discovery of this fact which is of value to 
us. It is the position of the Episcopal Church in 
this matter which makes it a power. 

So that, by our practical experience, it appears 
plain, after very little effort at attempting to 
demonstrate it, that the first gift bequeathed to 
the Church by the High Church school of thought, 
is the coDscious realization of the value of eccle- 
siastical over theological uniformity. 

But there was yet another gift left to the Church, 
by these zealous high churchmen. It was the 
realization, after a long and hard-won experience, 
that the objective sacraments, rather than the sub- 
jective emotions, form the true standard of the 
Church's life. 

We are always seeking for a standard of action, 
whatever our occupation in life may be. A book 
by Piazzi Smith, has been lately written to prove 
that the pyramids were built to be the accepted 
standard of trigonometry in the civilization of the 
Pharaohs. 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 41 

Lieut. Weyprecht, the German explorer, was 
the originator of the circumpolar stations of in- 
vestigation in the arctic circle ; to represent which, 
on the part of America, Lieut. Greely went on his 
perilous journey northward. 

This system of circumpolar stations was the 
attempt, by the scientific method, to have a definite 
standard of observations from a well-defined and 
concurrent series of investigating stations, so that 
the work of exploring the hidden north pole could 
go on from a systematic line of approach. And, in 
the religious life of the Church, we must have some- 
thing which can be used as the common standard, 
recognized alike by all, and of certain and undis- 
puted value. We may take the Bible ; but the 
Bible is read to-day with varying interpretations, 
and with different theories of the quality of its 
inspiration. We may use the pulpit as our stand- 
ard ; but with us no two pulpits are ever found to 
speak alike. We may take the prayer-meeting as 
the standard of religious life ; but a prayer-meeting 
can become as formal as the Roman mass, and the 
experiences given forth there may be utterly hol- 
low and unreal. 

But our Lord established two sacraments. One 
is the sacrament of admission into the Church, and 



42 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

has for its symbol of purity the element of water ; 
the other is the sacrament of continuance in the 
faith, and has for its symbol the elements of phys- 
ical nutrition. 

What can be better than the symbols which our 
Lord himself established ? Why not gather around 
these when Christians come together ? 

Children gather around the schoolhouse when 
the bell rings ; travellers cluster around the gate 
when the hour comes, and, looking at the clock, 
pass through the gateway to take the waiting 
train. Soldiers salute their flag in the days of 
peace, and broken regiments rally round it on the 
hard-fought field. Error may creep in ; supersti- 
tion, through the human passion for idolatry, may 
•change the sacrament into a mass. 

But the trouble is in the weakness of human 
nature ; it is not in the sacraments which our Lord 
himself ordained. 

The sacraments are fixed and abiding: human 
feelings are uncertain and variable. The definite 
fact of the sacrament remains : the indefinite emo- 
tions of the individual suffer a change. 

There was very deep wisdom, based upon a pro- 
found view of human nature's wants, which urged 
the high churchman to stand by the font and the 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 43 

altar until the Church, rising above any mere party 
narrowness, should come round to this position, and 
in its wise and generous comprehension exclaim, 
" Wait, O my soul, upon the Lord ! " 

By this citadel of truth, this school of thought 
stood firmly. And to-day the Church at large, is 
reaping the fruit of this wise decision of these 
stalwart churchmen, — that the objective sacra- 
ments form a better standard for the Church's life 
than the subjective emotions. 

The value of ecclesiastical over theological uni- 
formity, and the objective sacraments rather than 
the subjective emotions, as the standard of the 
Church's life, is the twofold gift to us of the High 
Church school of thought. 

We forget to-day the peculiar phraseology and 
the shibboleths of these brave workers and de- 
fenders of the past. They stood by their convic- 
tions, and left us a blessing which is making itself 
manifest in our Church's life to-day. 

Of these, too, it stands written, " These all, hav- 
ing obtained a good report through faith, received 
not the promises : God having provided some bet- 
ter thing for us, that they without us should not 
be made perfect." 



44 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 



III. THE WORK AND INFLUENCE OF THE BROAD CHURCH 
SCHOOL. 

In his essay upon " The Church as a Teacher 
of Morality," the author of " Ecce Homo," Pro- 
fessor Seeley of Cambridge, England, uses these 
words : — 

" Upon the question whether the Christian com- 
munity is regarded by its teachers as one and 
homogeneous, or as divided between a small num- 
ber of believers, — the children of light, — and a 
large number of merely nominal believers, — the 
disguised children of darkness, — depends, more 
than is commonly perceived, the whole character 
of Christian teaching. Those teachers who take 
the latter view will practically abandon all moral 
questions ; those who take the former, will occupy 
themselves as much with morality as with religion. 

" That the High Church party, who have gener- 
ally shrunk much more than the Evangelicals from 
drawing the perilous line of demarcation, have, 
nevertheless, not occupied themselves much more 
with moral questions is due to such a counteract- 
ing influence. They have been, for the most part, 
conservatives, attached by temper and tradition to 
the existing order of things, both political and 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 45 

social. They have been disposed to regard all 
moral questions as settled already ; and when they 
have possessed activity of mind, they have exerted 
it, not so much in speculative investigation of what 
ought to be held, as in antiquarian inquiries into 
what has been held. 

" A new school of Christian teachers has sprung 
up of late years, which neither divides the congre- 
gation nor defers to tradition. The Broad Church 
party, like the High Church party, or, still more, 
like the Catholic Church, aspires to guide, not a 
small collection out of the community, but the 
community itself. It has none of the old pietistic 
shyness, none of that shrinking from the affairs of 
the world and society, which is so visible in all secta- 
rian Christianity, and which sometimes assumes the 
form of an intense nervous antipathy to human be- 
ings. It admires the Mediaeval Church and Crom- 
well; it sympathizes with all the attempts which 
Christianity has made to influence secular govern- 
ment, and to impose its law upon whole communi- 
ties. But it is unlike the modern Catholic Church, 
or the old High Church party of England, in not 
being conservative. By being intensely conserva- 
tive at a time when society moves with a speed like 
that of the planet itself through space, the ecclesi- 



46 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

astical systems that aspire to government become 
more hateful to the world, than the inoffensive pie- 
tistic societies which pretend to nothing of the kind. 
But the Broad Church party is thoroughly liberal ; 
it hates obstruction, finality, and every sort of un- 
natural constraint. It hates, in an especial man- 
ner, what may be called Ecclesiasticism. So that 
the clergy of this school are, in a manner, at war 
with their own order, deplore constantly the weak- 
ness and mistakes of ; divines,' and in all disputes 
appeal to the judgment of the laity. It repudiates 
the principle of authority in the investigation of 
truth, and if it abides by some ancient beliefs, and 
would retain them as the basis of modern order, 
does so on the ground that they are true, and that 
ihey are the best and strongest foundation upon 
which modern order can be based. 

" Before this party, then, there evidently lies a 
task to which the older parties were not equal. 
No conservative prejudices, no theological despair 
need hinder them from giving the people a Chris- 
tian morality suited to the age." 

I have quoted this passage in its completeness, 
because it contains, in choice and fitting language, 
the essence of the subject at present before us. 
The present and the future belong, in a great 



TEE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 47 

degree, to this school of Church thought and life ; 
for it is this school of thought which keeps time 
to the inspiration of present-day forces, and 
strives, above all else, to walk reasonably before 
the Lord in the mixed land of present-day Chris- 
tianity, which is too often only a civilized heathen- 
ism. Two distinct prejudices have stood hitherto 
in the way of this school of thought ; but these 
are fast disappearing before the better knowledge 
of the work and influence of this latest phase of 
Christian thought. 

The first of these objections is the fact of its 
near relationship to German rationalism. The 
second is its appeal to the cultured class alone ; or, 
as it has been expressed, " its salvation by scholar- 
ship only." 

But the one element which gives to the broad 
churchmanship of. to-day its commanding power, 
is the latent, but clearly recognized, fact, that to 
it belongs the champanionship of the age against 
the autocratic power of the Church of Rome. 
" Protestanism has had its fight with Rome, and 
Rome still survives. There are those who, seeing 
this fact, declare that Protestantism is a failure, 
and to its boasted methods and hard-worn weapons 
the Church will never again return. The Broad 



48 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

Church school of thought — with its method of 
induction, and its scientific habit of mind — 
champions the old foe on an entirely new field. 
It yields what dogmatic Protestantism once thought 
infallible truth, and defies the authority of Rome 
upon the ground of the constitution of human 
nature. Authority, tradition, imagination, theo- 
logical learning, and refined scholarship represent 
the one side ; philosophic speculation, scientific 
speculation, scientific scepticism, and impatience 
of restraint represent the other. Mere Protestant- 
ism, in harmony with neither, appeals to neither 
of the two vital principles by which in every age 
of the world the human mind has been influenced. 
It did so once ; but it does so no longer." (Review 
of English Church Life, " New York Tribune," 
Oct. 7, 1882.) 

The rise and progress of the Broad Church school 
of thought dates from Coleridge's philosophy, 
Wordsworth's poetry, and Maurice's theology. 
There had been rationalistic theologians before 
the year 1830, but there was no movement with 
life and growth and a future in it before this 
date. The Cambridge school of Platonists, with 
such names as Cud worth, Henry Moore, Benjamin 
Whichcote, — the latter called by his con tern- 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 49 

poraries the "greatest preacher of his age," — had 
flourished two centuries before. But it was re- 
served for Coleridge and Maurice to set in motion, 
perhaps unwittingly, the latest development of 
Anglican religious life. It is hard, as we read of 
these men by their contemporaries, to judge aright 
of the magnitude of the movement they inau- 
gurated. Carlyle, in his memorabilia, speaks of 
Coleridge in the following unvarnished phrase- 
ology : — 

"Coleridge's table-talk — insignificant, yet ex- 
pressive of Coleridge. A great possibility that 
has not realized itself. Never did I see such 
apparatus got ready for thinking, and so little 
thought. He mounts scaffolding, pulleys, and 
tackle; gathers all the tools in the neighborhood 
with labor, with noise, demonstration, abuse, and 
sets — three bricks. I see in him one glorious up- 
struggling ray (as it were) which perished — all 
but ineffectual — in a lax, languid, impotent char- 
acter." 

A little too hasty generalization on the part of 
the Chelsea seer, only equalled by the following 
satire upon Maurice : — 

" One of the most entirely uninteresting men 
of genius that I can meet in society is poor 



50 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

Maurice, to me ; all twisted, screwed, wire-drawn, 
with such a restless sensitiveness, the utmost in- 
ability to let nature have fair play with him. I 
do not remember that a word ever came from him 
betokening clear recognition, or healthy, free 
sympathy with any thing. One must really let 
him alone till the prayers one does offer for him 
(pure-hearted, earnest creature that he is) begin 
to take effect." 

How grateful we ought to be for Carlyle's 
prayers ! for they brought a more gracious rain 
upon the inheritance of the Church, than did those 
of Elijah, when he asked for rain in the days of 
the drought in Israel. 

One other description by this contemporaneous 
seer of the third factor in. this newly-evolved life 
remains. It is thus that Carlyle speaks of Words- 
worth : — 

" I did not expect much, but got mostly what 
I wanted. One finds a kind of sincerity in his 
speech. But for prolixity, thinness, endless dilu- 
tion, it excels all the other speech I had heard 
from mortals. A genuine man — but, also, essen- 
tially a small genuine man. 

" I fancy that his environment and rural proph- 
ethood has hurt him much. I rather fancy he 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 51 

loves nothing in the world as much as one 
could wish. No man that I have ever met has 
given me less, has disappointed me less. May 
peace be with him ; and a happy evening to his, on 
the whole, respectable life." 

If it is wise that we should seek to see ourselves 
as others see us, it is still more wise to let poster- 
ity have a word to say concerning the actors in any 
present. 

What the Oxford tracts, with the culminating 
horror of Tract No. 90, were to the Catholic re- 
naissance of Newman and Pusey, the famous series 
of " Essays and Reviews " were to the infant 
Broad Church movement. The Church of Eng- 
land stood aghast, as in unmistakable print, in 
black and white, the rationalism of Germany was 
found growing upon English soil. But after her 
first sound of alarm, recovery so far set in, that 
the first of the essayists, Dr. Temple, was made 
a bishop, and was thus effectually robbed of the 
fascinating sting of heresy. Arnold of Rugby, 
Robertson of Brighton, the brothers Julius and 
Augustus Hare, Kingsley of Eversley, Rowland 
Williams in his little parish of Broadchalke, in 
Kent, with Stanley in Westminster Abbey, form 
a group of as brave and stalwart workers as the 



52 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

rugged group of Evangelicals a century before 
them, or the Oxford leaders, their contemporaries. 

But Maurice was their leader. It was round 
him that they gathered. Perhaps there were those 
of his day and generation who looked upon him 
only as an impracticable dreamer ; but it is well 
at times to remember that the dreamer has his 
mission quite as surely as the drudge. 

It is difficult to fix an exact date to the advent 
of this third and latest school of thought in the 
Church life in America. The year 1845 marks 
the beginning of Bishop Alonzo Potter's remarka- 
ble episcopate of twenty years. This was, as we 
have seen, the beginning of a new conception of 
Church-life in the Episcopal Church. The won- 
derful influence of this man silently made itself 
felt in the councils of the Church. The contagion 
of his example was felt in that hitherto narrow 
corporation, the House of Bishops. A definite 
something was found as the residuum of his life 
and. teaching, that was simply known as church- 
manship, without the addition of any adjectives 
which had to do with lines of trigonometry, such 
as height, or depth, or breadth. 

Twenty years after Bishop Alonzo Potter's con- 
secration, or about the year 1865, the first few 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 53 

broad churchmen in this American Episcopal 
Church appeared. It would be a hard matter 
at present to name them, even if such an enumer- 
ation should be deemed wise. It is difficult to tell 
where they came from, or from what quarter they 
developed. 

But the important thing is, that they began to 
appear. They came, as the first robins come in 
the spring-time, suddenly, and yet in groups ; or 
as the clustering quail bunch together in the 
thickets in October. 

Some of them came from the families and the 
seminaries which had hitherto been known as the 
shrines of Evangelicalism. Others came from an 
intellectual development, which burned its legiti- 
mate way through the equilateral boundaries of 
Anglican high churchmanship. To some, the Evan- 
gelical hypothesis was not sufficient for the de- 
mands of the new age. To others, the dogmatic 
decisions of the Church fathers proved themselves 
inadequate to minds which were en rapport with 
the thought and spirit of the present-day outlook 
upon life. A casual observer would not take these 
young men for clergymen. They found them- 
selves, by some mysterious occult law, warring 
with the traditions and temperament of the cleri- 



54 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

cal mind. A black tie or scarf took the place of 
the old white cravat ; a scholarly way of looking at 
things usurped the old foregone conclusion of the 
party verdict. The older fathers looked upon 
them as mere theological and ecclesiastical Gal- 
lios ; but the people were glad to hear them, and 
the pulpits where they preached brightened with 
a fresh hue of interest. 

Theological club-life asserted itself with these 
young broad churchmen. They had their " clericus 
clubs " in the large cities ; their preachers were be- 
ginning to make themselves felt, and in not a few 
seminaries their influence was felt most decidedly. 

There were three marked leaders to this latest 
school of Church-life. Perhaps they were not 
looked upon at the time as leaders, but the verdict 
of posterity has marked them as such. The first 
of these men was William Augustus Muhlenberg, 
whose inspiring life has recently been told in the 
interesting volume from the pen of Miss Anne 
Ayres. Dr. Muhlenberg was the seer and the 
poet of this latest school. of Church-life. He 
would not deny the power and the beauty of the 
old, but at the same time he believed in the surely- 
coming new. He rejoiced in both the terms, or 
Shibboleths, of the parties that had gone before, so 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 55 

that at the last he called himself an Evangelical 
Catholic, with the accent on the third syllable of 
the word " evangelical," and not, as the stalwarts 
of that party pnt it, on the first syllable of the 
word, spelled with a great big letter " E." His 
poetry, his Church of the Holy Communion, his 
St. Luke's Hospital, his dream of St. John-land, 
and the long hoped-for Inter-Ecclesiastical Con- 
gress, together with his memorial papers to the 
General Convention, mark him as the poet, or the 
creative mind, of this latest school of thought. 

He passed the days of his own generation as a 
visionary, a dreamer, a beautiful spirit with Uto- 
pian ideas continually before him, but not as one 
of the practical men of the Church's life and 
thought. To-day the so-called practical men of 
that period are alike forgotten, while the spirit 
of Muhlenberg is at the van of the Church's life 
of the present. 

If Muhlenberg was the vates, or seer, of the 
Broad Church movement, Dr. Edward A. Wash- 
burn was its philosopher. He formulated spirit- 
ual sentiments into philosophical propositions. He 
was, after all, the true leader of this latest school 
of Church-thought. His spacious study in the rec- 
tory of Calvary Church, New York, was the tryst- 



56 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

ing-place where the younger clans of the Church 
met and fought out their doubts, and perplexi- 
ties, and fears. Here the " Living Qhurch " was 
born, whose motto, taken from the old hymn of 
Bernard, might have been, 

" Brief life is here our portion." 

It was named and dubbed for its knightly work 
at a large meeting held in this same study, wherein 
bishops, doctors of divinity, and seedling students 
were alike eager with the hope of a new light 
dawning o'er the gloomy hills of ecclesiastical 
darkness. In this same study the plans for the 
proposed Church Congress saw first the light of 
day. 1 Who that was at the early meetings of 
these men of liberal thought can ever forget the 
figure of Dr. Washburn, as with graceful, military 
stride he held the imaginary doctrine or proposi- 
tion in the fingers of his left hand, and, thrusting 
it out at arms' length, demolished it with the sabre- 
swing of his right arm ; while he braced back his 
square-set shoulders, as if ready to meet the on- 
slaught of some attacking force ? It was Washburn 

1 While it was at Dr. Washburn's study that the desire for a 
Church Congress first took public expression, I believe that it is 
generally considered that Dr. Edwin Harwood of New Haven 
was the original advocate of the first Episcopal Congress. 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 57 

who gave dignity and power to views and opinions, 
which in themselves were too often crude and ill- 
compacted. The rich machinery of his spirit 
worked out a strong and philosophical conclusion 
to every thing he laid his mental grasp upon ; and 
the Broad Church school of thought in America, 
rose slowly and grandly to a position of dignified 
leadership as Dr. Washburn became its acknowl- 
edged head and master. 

Most fittingly of him can we say, in Longfel- 
low's lines on Charles Sumner, — 

"Death takes us by surprise, 
And stays our hurrying feet. 
The great design unfinished lies ; 
Our lives are incomplete. 

But in the dark unknown 

Perfect their circles seem ; 
Even as a bridge's arch of stone 

Is rounded in the stream. 

Alike are life and death, 

When life in death survives, 
And the uninterrupted breath 

Inspires a thousand lives. 

Were a star quenched on high, 
For ages would its light, 
Still travelling downward from the sky, 
Shine on our mortal sight. 



.58 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

So when a good man dies, 

For years beyond our ken 
The light he leaves behind him lies 
Upon the paths of men." 

If Muhlenberg was the seer, and Washburn the 
philosopher, John Cotton Smith was the statesman, 
of this third school of thought in the American 
Episcopal Church. 

Dr. Smith came of a race and pedigree which 
knew how to bend gracefully. He had in his com- 
position something of the politician, something of 
the courtier, and a great deal that was statesman- 
like. In a notice of his death the " New York 
Times " spoke in the following words of this vigor- 
ous worker : — 

" Of the three leaders who have dropped out of 
the ranks of the Episcopal clergy in this city dur- 
ing the last two years, Dr. John Cotton Smith was 
the youngest, and in some respects the ablest. Dr. 
Osgood had large culture, and drew more closely 
together the affiliated interests of religion and 
society, than they had been drawn before his day. 
Dr. Washburn organized and developed the Broad 
Church school of thought, and united, in a rare 
degree, the man of letters with the quality which 
made a preacher of unusual force and power. Dr. 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 59 

Smith had the same love of letters and discursive 
learning, but possessed a broader and more gener- 
alizing mind. He united the statesman with the 
man of thought. He was deeply interested in 
social and religious movements. His heart and 
mind went together in efforts to regenerate society, 
and in his hand a metropolitan parish came to 
represent the forces which touch humanity in 
every direction. The abstract tendency of his 
mind was largely controlled by his practical inter- 
est in the lives of his fellow-men. He illustrated, 
as also did Dr. Muhlenberg before him, the mod- 
ern way of making the Christian Church inclusive 
of all the ethical movements of the day. This 
large plan of working placed him in an exceptional 
position. He became a notable clergyman. He 
never shut himself up within what has been sar- 
castically termed the s Anglican paddock.' His 
parish was worked after a liberal fashion, and his 
ideas of what belonged to a clergyman of the last 
part of the nineteenth century followed in the same 
order. He never swerved from the standards and 
obligations of ecclesiastical authority in his own 
communion ; and yet, perhaps, no clergyman in the 
Episcopal Church enjoyed to the same extent the 
confidence of Christian people in other religious 



60 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

bodies. He had little sympathy with ecclesiastical 
exclusiveness. His mind and hand were in accord 
with what is best in American thought and life. 
He comprehended the lines of direction in the 
Episcopal Church, and had a large share in the 
pacifying influences which finally overcame the ex- 
tremes of opinions prevalent in that body ten years 
ago. It was generally felt that in foresight, in the 
knowledge of men, in the recognition and accom- 
plishment of possibilites, and in the ability to in- 
fluence others, he had the qualities of leadership 
to a rare degree, and this was a prominent feature 
of his latter life. He was trusted for his correct 
insight into the directions of current opinion, and 
beloved for the courage and honesty with which 
he stood by his liberal convictions. He did some- 
thing to widen the range and enlarge the possibili- 
ties of the Episcopal Church*, to strengthen and 
broaden its sympathies with what is best in Ameri- 
can thought and mind. Though he had done much 
for a man in his fifty-sixth year, his mind was still 
growing ; and, had his life been extended to the 
usual span of years, his influence would have been 
felt still more strongly as an ecclesiastical leader, 
and as the kind of a teacher most needed in the 
present tendencies of American Christianity." 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 61 

The " Christian Union " also recognized the 
power and effectiveness of his work. In a notice 
of his death it used the following words : — 

" Simultaneously with the cessation of party 
spirit in the Episcopal Church came the demand 
for free discussion ; and out of this sprang the 
Church Congress, with a whole army of broad 
churchmen behind it. Dr. Smith was one of the 
original leaders in this movement, and almost the 
last time he appeared in public was on the plat- 
form of the Providence Congress, where he read a 
valuable paper on the Revised Version of the New 
Testament. He believed in the Congress, and saw 
in it the kind of influence which would do the 
most good for the Episcopal Church, and prepare 
the way for it to take its rightful hold upon 
American thought and society. He had much to 
do in shaping its policy, and some of the ablest 
papers read before it came from his pen. 

" He saw principles and truths as wholes, while 
not overlooking them as particulars ; and at the 
time of his death had come to be trusted as a man 
who had grown out into something of the fulness 
of a representative leader of the Episcopal Church. 
He stood almost alone, because he stood foremost. 
He understood the great Protestant bodies, and 



62 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

he understood his own Church; and people who 
sought for the unities among Christians had begun 
to trust him to a rare degree. 

" He had the respect and confidence of the best 
Christian people in America, and God had put 
rare opportunities for great usefulness into his 
hands. He stood in the front line of conservative 
religious progress, and he was statesman, philoso- 
pher, and Christian leader in one. The changes 
and growths in which he had a conspicuous share 
had placed him in a unique position ; and just as 
the hopes of men had begun to centre in him as 
in one who had seen the vision of the new day, 
and understood what is yet to be, he vanished 
from our sight." 

But although Muhlenberg was the seer, Wash- 
burn the philosopher, and Cotton Smith, with his 
" Church and State," the statesman of this school 
of thought, there were others who were none the 
less leaders in this movement. The rector of 
Trinity Church, Boston, was the great preacher 
of this phase of religious thought and life, and 
guarded with a fervent care, like the burden of 
the Jewish prophets of. old, the great citadel of 
individualism. 

He touched us all with his magic wand of 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 63 

power ! He opened streams in the desert, and lo, 
the long-hidden waters gushed out ! What is not 
owing to this great brother and leader, from the 
younger preachers and workers of to-day, for mak- 
ing it a delight and an inspiration to walk before 
the Lord in the land of the living ! The assis- 
tant bishop of New York, too, with his wonder- 
ful power of handling opposite men and divergent 
tendencies, has stood guard at the other extreme, 
and has watched over the Church's institutionalism. 
Even that which some critics would condemn in 
his brief episcopate, has sprung alone from his 
strong desire to inaugurate, like his illustrious 
father, a reign of generous churchmanship, wherein 
every thing that is good and beautiful might be- 
come a serviceable power. Dr. Osgood gave his 
learning; Dr. Mulford and Professor Allen of 
Cambridge, have enriched the theology and eccle- 
siastical history of the Church with their healthful 
and vigorous contributions to the world of reli- 
gious thought, Heber Newton has taught us in 
plain and strong terms the right and wrong, of A/S$~ 
the Bible ; while individual pulpits and isolated 
dioceses have shown the power of the preachers 
who have occupied them, and the bishops who 
have guarded them. And this latest development 



64 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

of thought and life has been brought about, not so 
much by any party's organization, as by the work 
and influence of an unorganized school of liberal 
thought. The Broad Church school in America 
has slowly, but surely, put the Episcopal Church 
well in the forefront, as the leader and inspirer 
of the other religious organizations around her. 
The work of this school has been twofold : — 
I. First of all, these broad churchmen have un- 
loaded the Church of its superfluous and merely 
traditional dogma. They have reduced the dog- 
matic habit and tendency to its lowest possible 
terms. There has been a vast clearing of the deck 
of its traditional and unnecessary dogma. These 
later teachers and thinkers have dwelt less and 
less among the doctrines and traditions, and more 
and more among the simple verities as found in the 
realm of ethics, morality, and the world of right 
living and honest thought. The inductional habit 
of mind has taken the place of the older method 
of theological deduction, and, in accordance with 
the old motto of Terence, they have proved that 
nothing which is human can ever be foreign to the 
wants of humanity. This is, undoubtedly, the first 
gift to the Church of the present, from this third 
and latest school of Church-life. 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 65 

n. The other gift to the Church has been the 
establishment of the free platform of the Church 
Congress. This Church-congress system was first 
tried as an experiment in 1871, and is an impor- 
tation of the later life of the English Church. A 
correspondent of " The Nation " describes this Eng- 
lish Congress as follows : — 

" The Church Congress has been hitherto dis- 
tinguished not only by the zeal, but by the violence, 
of those who frequent it. Bitter invectives of the 
high churchmen against their Low Church perse- 
cutes, and against the jurisdiction of lay judges 
in ecclesiastical matters, angry collisions, not only 
between low churchmen and high churchmen, but 
between both and the Broad Church or heterodox 
clergy, who occasionally joined in the inele'e, were 
frequent during its earlier years. The High 
Church party, as being that which has the keenest 
interest in all ecclesiastical affairs, generally came 
off victorious, and gave a High Church character 
to the Congress as a whole. But in the last few 
years there has been a visible change. Broad 
churchmen and Evangelicals recognize the value 
of the Congress, and use it more than they for- 
merly did. The high churchmen are more tem- 
perate and conciliatory. And now, at the last 



66 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

meeting, there was, together with some warm dis- 
cussion, a general convergence of sentiment, a 
feeling of friendliness between the three great 
parties, a sense of unity underlying their divergen- 
ces, which strikingly contrasts with the tone of 
earlier years. It is not that the old controversies 
have disappeared, or are on their way to disappear- 
ing ; it is, rather, that each section of the Church 
has learned by experience that it cannot extinguish- 
the other, either by the aid of the law, or mere 
clamor and denunciation. The Ritualists have 
made good their position in one direction, and the 
Latitudinarians in another ; and there is no use in 
treating them with the same impatience which was 
felt while they were still new and ungauged forces. 
And the Ritualists themselves, just because they 
feel themselves stronger in numbers and influence, 
are less disposed to intemperance of language ; or, 
at any rate, are better able to control it when they 
meet those who belong to different schools." 

The experiment of the Congress in this country 
has not only been the greatest possible success in 
the way of producing liberality and vitality of 
thought in the Episcopal Church : its method has 
proved to be the connecting-link between the Epis- 
copal Church and the sister historic churches of 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 67 

this land, so that the Church Congress has grown 
into the " Congress of Churches," and the " Con- 
gress of Churches " has led the way to the theo- 
retical " United Churches of the United States," 
which may yet, in time, become a practical unity 
without being a dead uniformity. 

But it is time to bring this chapter to a close. 
The mission and meaning of the Evangelical party, 
the value and power of the High Church position, 
the work and influence of the Broad Church school, 
show us the gifts of the Church of yesterday to 
the life of to-day. 

It is thus that this Church, through the growth 
and development of its separate and distinct 
schools of thought, becomes a heritage of faith and 
experience, which already lays its vigorous hand 
upon the Church-life of the future ! Can we not, 
then, say of this Church of ours, in the matchless 
language of the psalm, " Qui regis Israel," as, with 
gratitude for its definite past, and confidence in its 
generous present, we await the developments of 
the future with a keen and active eye, ever upon 
the alert for practical, and not mere fictitious or sen- 
timental, unity in this highly-favored land of ours, 
"Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: Thou 
hast cast out the heathen, and planted it. Thou 



68 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

madest room for it, and when it had taken root, it 
filled the land. She stretched out her branches 
unto the sea, and her boughs unto the river. Turn 
Thee again, thou God of hosts : show the light of 
Thy countenance, and we shall be whole." 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 69 



CHAPTER II. 

THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT 
AS IT CEIHTRES IX THE DOCTRINE OF THE ESCARXATIOX. 

Paganism and Christianity are diametrically 
opposed in their conception of human nature's 
central hope — its "belief in an ever-present God in 
the midst of the world and human life. 

To the pagan mind the world has existed for 
ages in some way ; and at the remote beginning 
of all things stands God, just as the first chalking 
of a long line drawn upon a blackboard is the 
beginning of the line. In other words, God is 
pushed back from the bustling verities of the pres- 
ent world, through space and time, until matter 
has a beginning, and when matter begins, there 
God is found, — a Deus ex rnachina, but a God in 
some way inwrought with the dawning, phenome- 
nal world. 

To the Christian mind, on the other hand, God 
exists outside of the boundary lines of time and 



70 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

space. "I am hath sent thee," said the Almighty 
in His vision to Moses. " Before Abraham was I 
am" said our Lord to the Jews who stood around 
Him deriding His claims of Messiahship. 

These are certainly striking assertions of the 
doctrine which has long been forgotten, and which 
is dawning upon the world to-day with such a 
conscious sense of power, that God is present in 
His world and in human nature, and that this is 
what the revelation of truth in the Incarnation of 
"Jesus Christ means : that the doctrine of a far-off, 
absent God is essentially a pagan doctrine, and 
brings about pagan results in the development of 
thought, even if it be Christian thought. 

Plato's dream of an ideal reality underneath the 
material creation, becomes actual in the Christian 
doctrine of the timeless existence of God, and his 
revealed presence in human history. 

I want in this chapter to speak about the the- 
ology of the Church of the future, and its method 
of expression as found in the central doctrine of 
Christianity, — the fact and the power of the In- 
carnation. 

All the new growth of positive Christian truth, 
all the fresh flowering of religious impulse, all the 
reconstructive theological tendencies of the age we 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 71 

live in, come from the re-preaching of this doctrine 
of the Incarnation — God manifested in the flesh. 
Fifty years ago the burden of preaching was to 
the effect that Christ was present once in the 
world, and that it was the atonement upon Mount 
Calvary, which united this wandering world to 
God. Now, while it is just as truly maintained 
that that one act was the historical and official 
impact of the Saviour saving the world, the other 
great truth is brought out to the light with a new 
power and meaning ; and when we think of Christ 
as the power of God, we think of Him as to-day 
one with His Church by the contact of a living 
faith which sees within the veil, and not only and 
alone as one who eighteen hundred years ago, 
was with His people for the mere fragment of a 
human lifetime. 

This eternal life of God outside of creation, 
time, and human history, while it is the basis of 
all theistic philosophy, is also the cardinal tenet 
of the Christian religion. 

It has been forced up into the light again at the 
present period, and it comes before the world 
with a right or philosophical side, and with a 
crude or superficial side. But the crudities and 
superficial inferences will disappear, in time, be- 



72 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

fore the rounding, polishing processes of that 
Christian truth which is eternal, and must abide. 
It is this doctrine of the Incarnation coming to 
the light as a forgotten reality, or a long lost 
treasure, which is the beginning of all that new 
expression of theology, which is asserting itself 
to-day, and which will change the basis of the- 
ology from a far-off theological to a present Chris- 
tological one. It is this doctrine of the Incarna- 
tion, hugged and embraced by the unrelenting 
Church of Rome in her dogma of the Mass, as 
the horns of the altar and the city of refuge 
whither the avenger of man's soul dare not tread, 
which has kept the idea of a rational supernatu- 
ralism alive in the Church as, after all, the one 
only motive-power of the Church's life. It is the 
raying forth of this dogma of Rome, based upon 
the doctrine of the Incarnation, or the fact of an 
ever-present Christ with us, which has given us that 
latest departure in the religious world, known as 
ritualism, — a tendency which has both a superfi- 
cial, and a deeply-earnest, side, and whose bright 
and positive side is rooted and anchored in the new 
realization and new preaching of this doctrine of 
the Incarnation. 

Perhaps the Church may have stumbled over 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 73 

the manner of Christ's presence with us in the 
past; but even this stumbling amid the verities 
of our faith, will not be in vain if it leads the 
Church to recast its habit of thought and ex- 
pression, and to build up its theology for the 
future, not upon the pagan doctrine of a far-off 
Deity, but upon God's presence in human history, 
and in human nature, as an eternal, historical, and 
spiritual fact. 

It was this belief which nerved the apostles in 
the impact of the early beginnings of their faith 
with the dying beliefs of paganism. 
* It was no far-off Jewish God, no traditional 
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord, which made these once 
timid disciples strong to do service for their Master. 
Never could these men forget the scene of the 
Crucifixion, or the joy of Easter-day, or the glory 
of the Mount of Ascension. That which impressed 
them with such a tremendous sense of their Mas- 
ter's power and authority over nature and man, 
was the fact, that at last they perceived that God 
was in Christ, as He had never been in human 
nature before. 

Here was the long-promised Emmanuel — God 
with us. And it was this belief which made 
the disciples strong, and gave the apostle to the 



74 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

Gentiles his majestic command over his fellow- 
men. For Christ did not promise His disciples 
the gift of an infallible Book, or an infallible 
Church, or an infallible Vicegerent. He promised 
them Himself. He promised He would be with 
His people to the end of time. Like tired, doubt- 
ing sailors ready to dispute over chart and com- 
pass, and draw opposite conclusions from the same 
instructions, the apostles were hovering around 
their Lord, burdened with the sense of their 
responsibility, and wondering how they were to 
conduct this newly-formed Christian Church. But 
when Jesus, the Master pilot, born to rule, and 
made to be leaned upon, said to them, " I am with 
you ; I am in the ship," then their imaginary 
fears broke away,- and they were calm and strong 
again : and this is what I mean by the inner power 
of this re-preached truth of the Incarnation. 

It is Christ as Emmanuel, God with us ; not as 
a pious expression, not as a mere title found in the 
Bible, not as a dogma of theology, but as a living 
and abiding fact. 

And the difference between Christianity as a 
force among the other forces of human life, and 
Christianity as a theological science, built up out 
of traditions, syllogisms, metaphysics, and eccle- 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 75 

siastical conventionalities, is the difference between 
Christ present in His Church and in the world He 
came to save, and this or that human interpre- 
tation of the doctrine of His presence. 

The one is an abiding religious principle, and 
is a power; the other is a theological science 
depending upon the intellectual condition of 
men's minds, and is at best an opinion or a bundle 
of opinions. It is the difference between the 
Master — silent, it may be, but yet after all in His 
own ship — and the distressed sailors disputing 
in the storm as to the meaning of the written 
order, and as to how they shall sail the battered 
and uncertain bark. And this is just the differ- 
ence which we find among the commonest facts of 
every-day life. We may know a pearly gem, or 
a rift of light, or a simple flower as a fact, without 
at all beginning to understand the scientific inter- 
pretation of it. Or, as Tennyson puts it : — 

" Flower in the crannied wall, 

I would pluck you from the crannies ; 
Hold you here, root and all, 

In my hand, 
Little flower : but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, 

And all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 



76 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

One of the commonest tendencies which comes 
home to us all, in the habitude of our ordinary 
modes of Christian thinking, is to live by spas- 
modic theological epochs, and to wonder what is 
coming when the next new epoch comes. We 
soon find out in childhood, under the average 
Sunday-school instruction, that there have been 
thus far in the history of the world three periods, 
when, in a special way, God's hand has been mani- 
fested in human history, — the epochs of creation 
and of redemption and of sanctification ; or, as 
the Catechism has it in its summing up of the 
Apostles' Creed, we learn, first, " To believe in 
God the Father, who hath made me and all the 
world ; secondly, in God the Son, who hath re- 
deemed me and all mankind ; and, thirdly, in God 
the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me and all the 
people of God." 

Not very long ago I heard a Christian minister, 
while preaching, declare his wish that the present 
dispensation of the Holy Spirit might come to an 
end, in order that the next manifestation of God's 
power might be seen, and that His Almighty arm 
might be made bare before the nations of the 
earth. 

But this dead-lock which the formal and me- 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT, 77 

chanical type of mind puts upon the present, sim- 
ply because it is the present, and is neither the 
future nor the past, is an utter travesty of the 
revealed will and purposes of God. Such thoughts 
of an absent Deity, and such words with refer- 
ence to Him, are worthy of Elijah's bitter scorn, 
when he stung into a logical and consistent rage 
the false priests of Baal : " Either he is talking, 
or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey ; or, per- 
adventure, he sleepeth and must be awakened." 
We wind every thing up in what we are pleased 
to call a dispensation ; as though all the power of 
Christianity was to come streaming from that far- 
off hill-top of Galilee, where our Lord last touched 
the earth before He ascended into heaven, and 
where that terrible cloud, which has all these 
many years hung over our human hopes, shut 
Him forever from our sight. 

Just think of it ! As if God had forgotten His 
world ; as if He Himself were not in it ; as if the 
law and harmony of His purposes could never be 
interrupted by this deus ex machina lodged some- 
where behind the complicated mechanism, until it 
had finished to the utmost its wound-up tune ; or 
as if the clock was wound up to run a certain 
length of time, and strike a certain number of 



78 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

predestined hours, while the key of the timepiece 
was hung upon some pivotal epoch called a dispen- 
sation, and the schoolhouse was locked by the 
master who was absent, and none of the children 
could get the key or do any thing to help matters, 
until the doors were opened from without, and 
the long-absent teacher had come back once 
more. 

And that is why the Church of Rome, amid all 
its errors, falsities, and superstitions, is the mag- 
nificent power we see to-day, with its autocratic 
claims and supernatural gifts, and holds undoubt- 
edly in trust some gift for the Church of the 
future. And this is because it does not divorce 
God from the life of man and the world, but 
declares that whenever He performs a miracle or 
does a work, it is God's miracle and God's work ; 
that the finite limitations of time, such as present, 
past, and future, have nothing whatever to do with 
Him who is always the same yesterday, to-day, 
and forever. 

This power which is hidden in the doctrine of 
the Incarnation links itself to our human his- 
tory, and becomes part of the inheritance of the 
human race. Once in the order of time, accord- 
ing to the long-expected promises, the Saviour 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 79 

came. Once He was here in this world of ours : 
once the blood-drops of His atonement fell upon 
the place of a skull, and no malign power can ever 
wipe that fact away. This is not a hope or a 
belief, a sentiment or a wish : it is an abiding 
human fact. And in this way the realization of 
this doctrine of the Incarnation comes to the 
Christian consciousness, like some forked-lightning 
flash out of heaven.. It is powerful where it 
strikes ; and, like the lightning, it is vivid, and 
breaks into two bestriding sides. It comes to the 
Christian Church on the one hand with an electric 
wave of impulse, and we call it mysticism : it 
comes to another portion of the same Church 
with a sort of burning-glass glare which has 
almost a physical scorch in it, and we call it 
sacramentalism. In the former phase of its 
power the Holy Ghost becomes incarnate in the 
spiritual emotions of man ; in the latter, Christ 
is taught as present in the sacraments ; and thus 
the opposite wings of the Church draw off and 
separate. But under all this varied interpretation 
of the methods of Christ's influence with us, the 
root and basis of this standing doctrine of the 
Incarnation is here, and can never be argued 
down. 



80 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

And it is this which, as we have seen, has 
been forced up into the light to-day, and is slowly 
settling down to take its position as the keystone 
in the structure of the theology that must appear 
as the expression of the changed thought of this 
busy, scientific, utilitarian century. 

The history of this doctrine and the philosophy 
of its rise into the important place which it takes 
in the thought of to-day are interesting and very 
suggestive. 

Hegel announced the philosophical necessity for 
this truth of the immanence of God in human na- 
ture. 

Wordsworth tuned his sensitive and intuitional 
soul to this same thought. We see this in his 
" Ode on Immortality," and in his simile in the 
" Excursion" about the child applying the shell to 
his ear and catching the sounds of the far-off sea. 
What a cry for an interpreter of life's mystery is 
found in those well-known words : 

" Even such a shell the universe itself 
Is to the ear of faith ; and there are times, 
I doubt not, when to you it doth impart 
Authentic tidings of invisible things, 
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power, 
And endless peace subsisting at the heart 
Of endless agitation." 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 81 

But such a Christian pantheism as this must 
needs find a voice in human nature. The human 
instinct for a Christ must find a Christ. And it is 
the Christ, as we shall presently see, who, in the 
truest manner, reveals God to humanity. Let us 
see for a moment how this Christ was found in 
Germany and in England. 

Let us take two well-known philosophers, — 
Schleiermacher and Coleridge. 

In speaking of the former, Maurice says in his 
" Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy : " — 

" The Moravian discipline in which he was 
brought up was unsatisfying to his intellect: it 
did not meet the doubts respecting the sacred rec- 
ords which were awake in his time, and which af- 
fected him. But it left a deep impression on his 
heart. By degrees the two demands of the heart 
and the intellect, became more distinguished in 
him than they have perhaps been in any man. His 
heart must have a religion : it must resign itself 
absolutely, unreservedly to God. At first, the all- 
embracing divinity of Spinoza seemed to meet his 
needs. He could repose in that. As his personal 
necessities deepened, he became more conscious 
that he must have a personal being, upon whom he 
could cast his own burden and the world's bur- 



82 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

den. He believed in all his heart in such a being. 
He set him forth to his fellows as the only home 
for their spirits, the guide of their conduct. A 
very present helper he sought and found, and led 
numbers, who were weary of systems of divinity, 
to seek and find. But apparently no one with so 
much of this faith, cared less for a history of the 
divine acts, no one was more perplexed by a 
revelation which imported to come in the form 
of a history, to discover first the divine king of a 
nation, then the divine head of all nations. What 
he found in that revelation which answered to 
the cravings of his heart, and of human hearts, he 
accepted : that belonged to religion. The rest 
concerned the intellect. It might be dealt with 
merely by the intellect." 

What a true description is this of a seeker after 
truth, whose two avenues of search — the intellec- 
tual method and the method of the spiritual fac- 
ulty — led up to that central personage of human 
history, in whom these two methods of approach 
met. 

And again Maurice writes, in analyzing the pe- 
culiar intellection of Coleridge's system : — 

" He (that is, Coleridge) learnt that if he could 
believe in God, other difficulties would be noth- 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 83 

ing to him. That was the infinite difficulty. But 
he discovered that it was also the infinite neces- 
sity. He could believe nothing till he had this 
ground of 'belief. To feel this rock at the feet, 
to know that it was a rock, he had need to be 
shown something also of what he himself was. 

" There was a point, at which the old faith of 
his land intersected the most modern philosophy 
of another land. The demand for being by Plato, 
by Spinoza, by the Germans since Kant, was not 
an idle demand. 

" The I am, that I am who spoke to the Hebrew 
shepherd, awakened it and answered. The demand 
for unity by philosophical or religious schools was 
not an idle demand. The name which was writ- 
ten upon the Christian child satisfied it. The be- 
lief in a Father, which Priestly and the Unitarians 
had inculcated, was a deep and true belief. But 
that it might be real and practical, that it might 
not mock men with the idlest hope, there must be a 
union between the Father and his children; there 
must be a redemption from evil." — Maurice: 
Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, vol. ii, 668. 

I have quoted these two passages from the pages 
of Maurice's " History of Moral and Metaphysical 
Philosophy " to show how these two representative 



84: VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

men, — Schleiermacher and Coleridge, — the one in 
Germany and the other in England, arrived at this 
necessity for the doctrine of the Incarnation. 
Yet their philosophical investigations produced a 
recoil in their minds from the fascinating but 
nebulous system of Spinoza's pantheism. God 
was in the world, they said. Nature reflected the 
Deity at every turn. But human nature was a 
spark of nature. Was God in human nature ? they 
asked. A being the soul must have to lean on. 
And thus they came to the realization of the old 
truth in a new setting — a setting, a form of ex- 
pression which was the sure reaction from the con- 
ventional Augustinian theology of the Latin and 
the Reformed Church — ■ that God was in Christ in 
a kind and in a degree, in which He was in no 
other being ; and that this God-man was the 
world's hope, the way, the truth, and the life. 

The Oxford movement and the latitudinarian 
reaction from this return to the usages of the 
primitive Church, were the next steps in the pro- 
gress of our present-day theology. We are famil- 
iar with the story of this upheaval at Oxford ; and 
the many elaborate and carefully-prepared reviews 
of the late Dr. Pusey and his work, are fresh in 
our minds at the present time. And yet, when 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 85 

the history of this age comes to be written, as one 
has said, " The movement in which Dr. Pusey was 
a prominent leader, which, indeed, was known by 
his name, will be looked back upon as the most 
important crisis through which the Church of 
England has passed since the cays of Archbishop 
Cranmer. The world has swept on and has virtu- 
ally left Puseyism behind ; but there can be no 
doubt that the Oxford movement, or Tractarian- 
ism, or Puseyism, as it has been called, has been a 
quick and potent element in English life and 
thought." 

This movement, while it was clad in the armor 
of ritual, and seemed to be the revival of a spirit 
of form and ceremony, struck for a living, present 
Christ in the world, in the place of a dead Christ 
upon the cross eighteen centuries ago. It was in 
a strange way, as I have already said, the outcome 
of this newly-realized doctrine that God was in 
His own world in the person of Christ: He was 
not only once here when He hung upon the cross 
on Mount Calvary. 

Every great movement or awakening period, and 
every new stimulus upon our energies, breaks into 
one of two lines ; either into the life of further 
study and retirement, or into the arena of imme- 



8Q VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

diate action. It is difficult in any philosophy of 
thought, to find out always the exact relationship 
of one thing to another, though we know that an 
unseen relationship exists. 

Inspiration works in zigzag paths, like the un- 
certain currents of lightning; and it is hard to 
tell just where it will strike. " Oh, that I could 
know more ! " is the cry of those who receive the 
impress of their inspiration as knowledge : and 
this cry, this yearning of the nature, led on to the 
movement which took the name of its literature, 
and was called the Movement of the Essays and 
Reviews. " Oh, that I could do more ! " is the cry 
of those who find the inspiration of a new move- 
ment leading them out into the world of action. 

This was the motive which led the other wing 
of the Church, to those philanthropies and practical 
charities which the genius of ritualism has handled 
with such a firm and steady Christian grasp. 

But, after all that we may say about it, this Ox- 
ford movement was philosophically the legitimate 
result of Coleridge's philosophy; as Coleridge's 
philosophy, with Wordsworth's poetry, finally 
settled out of a nebulous pantheism into the defi- 
nite clearness of a positive, but a reconstructed, 
Christianity. 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 87 

It is Martineau, in his striking essay upon " The 
Personal Influences of our Present Theology," 
who so happily classifies these divergent tenden- 
cies, when he says : — 

" To these three movements, distinguished by the 
names of ^Newman, Coleridge, and Carlyle, must be 
mainly ascribed the altered spirit in regard to re- 
ligion pervading the young intellect of England." 

Could any classification be clearer than this ? 
The Oxford movement broke into three divisions, — 
the right wing, following Newman, went to Rome ; 
the left wing, following the teachings of Carlyle, 
has led out into the barren lot of what Martineau 
felicitously calls " Germanism ; " and the central 
division, holding fast the reformed and readjusted 
faith, has held that ground, which the spirit of an 
on-moving Christianity has claimed in advance, 
for that civilization which the principles of Christ 
have always dominated. I mean by this, that one 
current of this century has eddied off towards 
Latin ecclesiasticism ; another current has whirled 
its way around to German refinement of expres- 
sion ; while the main stream has swept on towards 
a definite future, and has brought with it down 
the stream of history the most sacred traditions 
of the past. 



88 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

The next important event, after the Oxford 
movement, was the publication in America of Dr. 
Horace Bushnell's works, — "Nature and the Su- 
pernatural," and " The Vicarious Sacrifice." 

Directly in the line of Coleridge and Maurice, 
this distinguished divine has presented the Ameri- 
can Church, with the curious spectacle of a Puri- 
tan theologian explaining and enforcing the 
hidden principles of Anglicanism. For an anal- 
ogy to this, we must imagine, if we can, a fire-eat- 
ing Southerner of the Palmetto State, maintaining, 
in the territory south of Mason and Dixon's line, 
the principles of William Lloyd Garrison's aboli- 
tion sheet, — " The Liberator." 

No doubt the Church of England, by her State 
connection, and by her persistent bringing forward 
of the outward or ecclesiastical form of Church- 
life, had forgotten the spiritual seat and origin of 
her two cardinal dogmas, — baptismal regenera- 
tion and eucharistic grace. But it was reserved 
for a Puritan divine, out of the system of New- 
England Congregationalism, to discover and drag 
out to the light, these two priceless gifts which 
the Anglican Church, in a mute and unconscious 
way, had been holding in trust for the human 
race. 



TEE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 89 

Bushnell's "Christian Nurture," as being the 
truest interpretation of the Anglican position with 
reference to the sacrament of infant baptism ; and 
" The Vicarious Sacrifice," as being the truest in- 
terpretation of the long-neglected doctrine of the 
Incarnation, as held in the Anglican view of the 
sacrament of the Lord's Supper, — are most 
valued gifts on the part of the American Church 
to the theology of the Church Catholic, and are a 
wonderful explanation, from the Puritan extreme 
of Protestantism, of that persistently moving mid- 
dle current of rational theology, which has been 
incased in the formulas and liturgy of the great 
Anglican communion, — she that in heart is free, 
and is the mother of us all. 

The strife and the contest which followed the 
publication of Dr. Bushnell's " Christian Nurture,"' 
is well known to all students of the history of the 
Church in New England. 

But this storm was redoubled when " The 
Vicarious Sacrifice " appeared. And the para- 
dox about this whole matter was, that while 
he seemed to destroy the very foundations of 
the orthodox faith in the doctrine of the atone- 
ment, he persisted in maintaining that he was 
only, after all, explaining and enforcing the altar 



90 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

view of Christ's sacrifice, as witnessed in the 
celebration of the eucharist in the Anglican 
communion. 

For myself, I know of nothing so profound and 
discerning in the history of modern theological 
writing, as Dr. Bushnell's last chapter in " The 
Vicarious Sacrifice," in which he pleads for human 
redemption, by the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, as 
seen in the form of the altar-service and by the 
use of the altar symbolism and phraseology. The 
deliverance of our souls from sin, and the deliver- 
ance of our minds from the burden of their own 
self-consciousness, is found in throwing ourselves 
upon the fact of the Incarnation ; while the objec- 
tive side of worship — found in the sacraments and 
in the altar-service — delivers our souls from the 
subjective anxiety, which a too lavish Protestant 
introspection has brought with it, as the den-like 
shadow of so much light. And in this view of the 
atonement, the Incarnation is both a deliverance 
of our souls from sin, and of our minds from their 
own subjective anxiety ; and the meaning of the 
strong human tendency to drift towards the sacra- 
mental expression of worship is thus explained by 
this American divine of Puritanism, as a philo- 
sophical necessity of the mind to free itself from 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 91 

the constantly pressing burden of a painfully con- 
scious subjectivity. 

And in this way, the insistence of the Anglican 
faith upon the sacrament of moral cleansing, and 
the sacrament of spiritual nutrition is explained 
by Dr. Bushnell as, after all, the gift to the Church 
of the Anglican reformers of the one great fact, 
that Christ is present with His people in the act of 
moral cleansing and education, and in the act of 
communion of spirits. 

" I could not excuse myself," he writes, " in the 
closing of this last chapter, if I did not call atten- 
tion directly to the very instructive and somewhat 
humbling fact, that we are ending just where 
Christianity began. After passing around the cir- 
cuit of more than eighteen centuries, occupied, 
alas, how largely ! in litigations of theory and 
formula, we come back at last to say, dropping 
out all the accumulated rubbish of our wisdom, 
preach Christ just as the Apostolic Fathers and 
Saints of the first three centuries did ; viz., in the 
facts of His personal life and death ; and these 
facts in the forms of the altar. If we look at the 
effects wrought, these first three centuries of Chris- 
tian preaching have never been matched in any 
other three ; and yet they had no formula at all of 



92 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

atonement, and had not even begun, as far as 
we can discover, to have any speculative inquiries 
on the subject. All our most qualified historians 
agree in this ; and we can see for ourselves from 
the Epistles of Clement and other Apostolic 
Fathers, so called, that no such inquiries had 
yet arrived. Is it then to be the end of all 
our litigations, theories, and attempted scientific 
constructions, that, after our heats of contro- 
versy have cooled, and our fires of extirpation 
have quite burned away, we come back to the 
same kind of preaching alphabet, in which the 
first fathers had their simple beginnings? Be 
it so. And yet the labor we have spent is 
by no means lost ; we shall come back into 
that preaching with an immense advantage gained 
over these fathers. What they did in their sim- 
plicity, we shall do in a way of well-directed 
reason. 

" Their simplicity, in fact, supposed the certainty 
of all these long detours of labor and contest to 
come afterwards ; but we, in our return, come 
back with our experiments all made, and detours 
all ended, not simply to preach Christ just in their 
manner, but to do it because we have finally 
proved the wisdom of it, and the foolishness of 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 93 

every thing else, — advantages that are worth to 
us all they have cost." 

And again, in this same closing chapter of "The 
Vicarious Sacrifice," Bushnell writes of the uses 
and ways of modern preaching as follows : — 

" They begin with the grand primal fact of the 
Incarnation ; for it is, only in that, and by that, 
mystery that the Person arrives whose history is 
to be entered into the world. Considered as the 
God-man, there is not a single fact or scene in the 
history which, fitly conceived, does not yield some 
lesson of power : the infancy ; the thirty years of 
silent preparation ; the recoil of the poor human 
nature, called the temptation, where the work 
begins ; every healing, every miracle, every friend- 
ship, every condemnation, every denunciation ; 
the lot of poverty ; the hour of oppressed feeling ; 
the weariness and sleep; the miraculous hem of his 
garment ; the transfiguration ; the prayers ; the 
amazing assumptions of a common glory and right 
with the Father; the agony, the trial, the cruci- 
fixion, the resurrection ; the appearings and tender 
teachings afterwards; and, last of all, the ascen- 
sion, followed by the descent of the Spirit to repre- 
sent and be Himself, according to His promise, a 
Christ everywhere present, everywhere accessible, 



94 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

no longer limited and localized in space, — in all 
these, and in all He said and taught concerning 
God, Himself, and us, the preacher is to find staple 
matter for his messages. There is almost nothing, 
even as to his mere manners and modes, which, if 
he is truly alive, will not open some gate or crevice 
into chambers of glory for the conscience and the 
heart." 

It is Professor Allen, in his recent volume, " The 
Continuity of Christian Thought," who has called 
the attention of students of Church-history to the 
entire subject which Dr. Mulford has brought before 
the public in his treatise on theology. A diligent 
student of Church-history himself, his mind is sur- 
charged with the subject ; and, by his rare felicity 
of thought and expression, he has given voice to 
the unuttered thoughts of many whose hearts have 
been musing upon this theme. 

Dr. Mulford's " Republic of God " is the next 
important theological product of the thought of 
this age. This is a book of to-day; and the 
judgment of to-day is not final or absolute. Its 
gifted author has passed away, before the men of 
the present have fairly known the book or its 
creator. 

It is seldom given to the men of any age to see 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 95 

the ultimate development of the thought of their 
age ; but the wide and varied criticism of this in- 
stitute of theology, insures its safe position and 
its continuance as a fountain of investigation, while 
the calm, seer-like rhythm of its postulates, reminds 
one of that sense of certainty and lofty command 
which comes from the reading of the higher and 
more rational pages of Emmanuel Swedenborg. 

As Professor Allen says : — 

" The only self-consistent hypothesis is that of 
Deity, indwelling in the historical process, and 
conducting it to its conclusion. Thence when 
God was enthroned in the remotest parts of space, 
or was localized on the altar or in the sacred book, 
the protest of humanity never ceased to be heard, 
and with increasing force bore witness to a higher 
truth. To formal theology this cry of the soul for 
God was known as mysticism. Mysterious it un- 
undoubtedly was to those who fancied that they 
stood in the place of God, and believed that the 
government of the world or of the Church devolved 
solely upon themselves." 

But now this cry comes not as the yearning en- 
treaty of mysticism, but as the rational, middle- 
current thought of the reasonable, religious, and 
holy faith of the Church. 



96 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

There is not a leaf, or a flower, or a growing 
plant, that is not a parable of the Incarnation, — 
a picture of God's power revealed in this world 
of His. There is not a process of mental argu- 
ment, or a brilliant display of intellection carried 
on in the human mind, revealing a man of genius, 
which is not an image of God blending Himself 
with His children, and speaking divinely through 
their thoughts, as an ^Eolian harp must sigh and 
murmur when the wind of heaven breathes through 
it. There is not a heathen nation worshipping its 
stock, or stone, or living creature, which does not 
prefigure thereby, even through its rank heathen- 
ism, this central thought of divine power revealed 
or manifested here in time. 

You may study out the meaning of Egyptian 
animal- worship, or of Grecian mythology, with its 
heroes born of Olympian gods and terrene women ; 
but even these, after all, were only the vain 
attempts of human nature, to coin out into definite 
shape this darling instinct of the human heart, — 
that divine power must in some way be incarnate 
upon the earth; that the Supreme Divinity, the 
Father of all gods and men, would not leave His 
children alone, and without conscious, definite help, 
forever. 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 97 

And this new conception of the doctrine of the 
Incarnation, when once it is firmly and philosoph- 
ically held, must, in time, reverse our entire sys- 
tem of theology. Instead of beginning with a 
far-off, absent God, at the farthest point of space, 
and coming down by deductional step-ladder 
through the argument from design, and the argu- 
ment from the consent of mankind, and the pre- 
sumption of the human mind, and the ontological, 
cosmological, and teleological arguments united, 
we come to man, and find at last in human history 
the Saviour for man. We must begin with the fact 
of a personal Christ as the greatest fact of human 
history, and, laying our hand on Him whose feet 
have trod our sinning earth, must work upwards 
by the inductional method until we reach in spirit 
and in truth that God who is a spirit while He is 
a father, and the father of all spirits, — that God 
who seeketh the worship of that which in man is 
spiritual. 

There has been no such interpretation of man's 
nature as Christ's interpretation of it. There has 
been no such revelation of the Father as the reve- 
lation which Christ has given us. 

Christ has made man known. He has made 
God known. He comes from the bosom of the 



98 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

Father. He finds a fitting home in the bosom of 
man, the Father's child. 

The Copernican system enlarged man's grasp 
of astronomy, simply because it began with a 
definite centre in the sun, rather than with the 
indefinite infinitude of the Ptolemaic method. 

And Christian theology must begin with the 
central fact of Christ, and find that the Kingdom 
of God, with all its light, as well as with all its 
righteousness, shall be added, when this fact is 
firmly and rationally held. 

As a reviewer of Dr. Mulford's book, " The Re- 
public of God," has truly said : — 

" This religious movement is an attempt to escape 
from the theological limitations, and reach the sim- 
pler beliefs of the historical Churches. It is not 
an outreaching toward science as such ; but it is 
the approach toward a broader theology at the 
same time that it is an attempt to realize the idea 
of God immanent in the world, in the way it was 
understood in the earlier Greek theology. It is 
hard to conceive how narrowing has been the 
scope of what is called Latin theology, since Augus- 
tine, in the fourth century, formulated its dis- 
tinctive positions. It has been a belief in God 
under severe limitations; and when Calvin, the 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 99 

great religious genius of the Reformation, under- 
took to improve upon Augustine, while retain- 
ing his dogmatic spirit, the iron entered into 
men's souls, and a hard, legal, formal religion, in 
which God was deaf and distant, has been the 
result. 

" Men want a whole God, a whole Christ, an 
entire humanity; and in a way which is taught 
neither in the Latin nor in the Puritan theology, 
they desire to see this result brought about. Just 
how it is coming no man can say ; but that it is 
coming, that it is in the air, that it is at the mo- 
ment of dawning, is just as certain as the fact that 
the intelligent Christian people of America, are 
rapidly walking away from their traditional reli- 
gious convictions, and beginning to entertain new 
thoughts of God and man and human destiny. 
And this movement is as positive in affirmations 
as are the postulates of science ; and the onward 
tread of the multitude, who are in it, is like the 
tramp of the Roman legions on the highways of 
that ancient empire." 

The terminology of Scripture and of the Prayer 
Book is surcharged with a past interpretation of 
its meaning. A new interpretation of the terms 
of our faith is at our very doors to-day : the light 



100 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

of a higher theology than any the world has as yet 
seen is already breaking upon us, in which all that 
is truest and best in the most rigid orthodoxy will 
have a settled and abiding place in the Christian 
Church, and in which the position of Christ as 
the Son of God will come out with a higher and 
a fuller meaning than the Church has as yet 
recognized, and in which the cautious reserve of 
every form of Arianism, with its narrowing and 
carefully balanced limitations, will be swept away 
in the fullest assertion that the human Christ was 
so far divine that He was Himself God. But, 
while I believe the new view is surely coming, 
I cling reverently to the sacred terminology of 
the past, until the dissolving view of the present 
brings out a perfect new in the place of the ver- 
itable old. 

This movement towards a new setting of theol- 
ogy upon the Christological, rather than upon the 
theological, basis, shows signs of breaking into two 
divisions. The left wing of thought stumbles at 
the supernatural in human history, breaks with 
the value of the inspiration of the Scriptures, 
makes of God a term or hook for the devout 
thoughts of the religious instinct to hang its 
worship upon, and sees in Christ the flower of 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 101 

humanity, and adores Him as the ideal of the 
highest development of the forces of human 
character. 

Miracles are not ; prayer is a deliverance from 
self-consciousness; immortality is an" instinct in 
man. The supernatural is ruled out of the do- 
main of the reign of law, but the moral heritage 
of the code of righteousness, lingers in this genera- 
tion as a tradition from the sturdy stuff of our 
forefathers. 

The right wing, on the other hand, recognizes 
the supernatural, and takes the confession of 
Frothingham to-day as the verdict of the well- 
balanced Christian consciousness, that after all 
one's studies of the meaning of Christianity, and 
after a life spent in the most vehement denial of 
it, one is compelled to admit that there must be a 
supernatural power back of the Christian Church, 
as the secret cause of its survival. It further ad- 
mits that we begin life with a mystery, and end it 
with a mystery ; and that, somewhere in human 
nature and in human history, a place is left for 
God ; and that this bulk of divine essence which 
we call the supernatural is only, after all the 
pressing upon the world of the material and the 
finite, the unknown possibilities of the spiritual 



102 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

and the infinite. Religion by its very nature must 
begin and end in mystery. 

Moreover, with reference to the divinity of 
Christ, this school of inquirers maintains that the 
true power of the Saviour's life was the conscious- 
ness of His higher nature, — his burden of pre- 
existence, which came out at last in his interces- 
sory prayer, " And now, O Father, glorify Me 
with the glory which I had with Thee before the 
world was." Even in the scene of the Christ- 
child in the temple, there was this dream of pre- 
existence, this dim consciousness of a life beyond 
and before his human life, — a Heavenly Father, 
and a Heavenly Father's business. 

The rudimentary germ of this dream of pre- 
existence is found even in our lives. You cannot 
make a little child believe that he came from 
nothing. He has always some confused legend or 
dream in his mind about coming from God, 
or f om some beautiful place, where he was 
very tenderly dealt with, before he was left as a 
little stranger in this world, with its sigh of 
mysteries about him. For myself, I believe that 
this innate rudimentary germ of an idea about 
pre-existence, means that the soul lives in the 
thought that God originally thought of it. That 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 



103 



is the far-off, original place for it ; or, as "Words- 
worth says, — 

1 ' Heaven lies about us in our infancy. 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness ; 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God who is our home." 



And thus in our poor, stunted human nature's 
dream of pre-existence, we see the germ of that 
which, in the perfect man Jesus Christ, was the 
human consciousness of the divine power. And 
it is this bulk of divine power in Christ, which, 
in bringing down God to man, has overcome the 
power of death ; and has made out of the human 
instinct of immortality, a demonstrated gift to 
man. 

Which of these two schools of interpretation 
will become the heir to the heritage of truth in the 
past, and the representative of God's revealed 
truth to the future, awaits the discoverer of the 
future. 

For with the law of the ascent of truth, there 
comes also a law of descent of heritage. 

The bones of Joseph were carried up into the 
land of promise as a souvenir of God's deliverance 



104 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

in the past. Even so the caravan of the Christian 
Church takes with it, into every new opening of 
truth, the sacred symbol of bygone deliverances. 

But best of all is this : Christ is with His 
Church ; God is with His people. At His signal 
we stand still, or we move forward. But we can- 
not go back to that darkness and slavery which 
always reigns where He is stripped of His power, 
and is not. 

I can remember, as a child in Philadelphia, the 
cry of the watchmen at midnight, as, with swing- 
ing lanterns, the hours of the night were called out 
by the street-patrol, with the added words, " All 
is well ! " I can remember at night the bolted 
stores, with heavy padlocks and iron shutters to 
guard and keep the precious wares within. 

But to-day the stores and offices have no longer 
those iron shutters and those heavy dungeon-bars. 
No longer a paid patrol calls out that all is well, in 
the dark hours of night. The defence of the store, 
laden with precious wares, is in the light that is 
within the building. The defence of the city 
streets is no longer with the night-watchmen : it is 
with the white glare of the electric moons, which, 
like a string of burning beads, are strung through 
the crowded thoroughfares. 



THE THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 105 

In other words, the method of defence is 
changed. It is the light within which protects, 
simply in the act of revealing. And thus it is 
with this changed basis of the defence of our faith. 
Parting as we do to-day from the iron decrees, and 
the logical bolts of a former system of theology, 
we can sing with a new meaning, as we think of 
Christ, the light of the world, and the light of the 
soul, that old psalm of the songs of degrees, 
" Except the Lord build the house, they labor in 
vain who build it. Except the Lord keep the city, 
the watchman waketh but in vain." 



106 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 

I have spoken thus far of the separate and dis- 
tinct gifts to our Church by men of strong convic- 
tion and of a resolute conscience. 

I have also spoken of the evident development 
of theological thought in the direction of a Christo- 
logical basis, which, however, as Professor Allen has 
shown in his " Continuity of Christian Thought," 
is only a revival of the old theology, since " the 
old is better." 

This heritage of conviction and of experience is 
our rightful possession to-day. We are the heirs 
of these men of faith and courage ; and that which 
was once their hard-earned property is ours to-day. 
We will shame our children, and those who are to 
come after us, if we do not utilize our inheritance, 
or if we continue to look at the past historical 
development of the Church in the narrow light of 
mere partisan handicraft. The day for the jour- 
neyman's conception of work is over: we ought 



THE PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 107 

to be master- workmen now in the creative period 
which lies before us. 

With this end in view, let me in this chapter 
point out some of the mile-stones on this ascent 
towards unity, that we may understand how far we 
have come in the journey, and may have a realiz- 
ing sense of the distance which separates us from 
"the ]and that is afar off." 

The first movement which inevitably commands 
our attention when we make any study of this 
subject, is the attitude of Dr. Muhlenberg in " The 
Memorial Papers." 

There were four dreams which this saintly poet 
had very close to his heart, — St. Luke's Hospital, 
the free Church of the Holy Communion, St. John- 
land, and Church Unity, as evidenced by that 
movement which was known as " The Memorial 
Papers." The first three of these visions he lived 
to see as established facts. The fourth aspiration 
of his holy spirit yet awaits fulfilment, and is the 
inspiration of the Church, in its outlook upon the 
future, to-day. 

The recently published life of Dr. Muhlenberg, 
together with his " Memorial Papers," have made 
this position which he took upon the subject of 
Church unity familiar to all students of present 



108 VINE OUT OF EGYPT 

Church-history. There is nothing in the history of 
the American Church so fraught with great possi- 
bilities, as the outline of the future which he 
sketched with a firm hand and a believing soul. 
This vision is for an appointed time ; and the seer 
being dead, yet speaketh. The lesser objects 
sought for in these " Memorial Papers," such as 
the relaxation of the stereotype order of services, 
and the enrichment and flexibility of the liturgy, 
have been already attained. The one great object 
of his life, as he pressed again and again for the 
appointment by the General Convention of a stand- 
ing Episcopal commission upon the subject of 
Church unity, yet awaits accomplishment. The 
-day for its realization has been postponed, until 
two results have been gained by the Church : first, 
its deeper sense of the need of a unification of 
Protestant Christendom, as new and unforeseen 
dangers thicken upon us ; and, secondly, a faith 
that will accept this high ideal as among the possi- 
bilities, according to our Lord's words, " all things 
are possible to him that belie veth." 

The author of his biography in speaking of this 
movement says : — 

" This Memorial, originating with Dr. Muhlen- 
berg, was a high and noble venture for the emanci- 



THE PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 109 

pation of the Church. It was presented to the 
House of Bishops, as a council of the Protestant 
Episcopate, by Dr. Muhlenberg and others of the 
clergy in sympathy with him. The movement had 
a twofold bearing : ; one on the Episcopal Church 
as such ; the other, which was its ultimate scope, 
on that Church considered in its essential elements 
as the form of a broader and more catholic sys- 
tem.' Both as to its formative idea and its widest 
development, the Memorial was powerfully and 
exhaustively set forth by Dr. Muhlenberg in a 
succession of pamphlets. Apart from their direct 
object, these papers are worth perusal for their 
beauty and fervor of utterance, their luminous 
argument, their pertinent and instructive illustra- 
tions, and, together with their boldness, the absence 
of any acrimony, the gentle and loving spirit which, 
like a golden chord running through them, binds 
all together as a pure offering on the sacred altar 
of Christian unity." (Life of Dr. Muhlenberg, 
pp. 260, 261.) 

The late Rev. Dr. E. A. Washburn, whose body 
now rests by the side of his saintly friend in the 
quiet shades of the realized dream of St. John- 
land, thus speaks of him : — 

" It was then (at the. date of the Memorial) that 



110 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

I first knew him personally ; and never can I forget 
the impression he left on me. He was at his ripest 
age. The glow of youth had passed into a large 
wisdom, but there was childlike faith — the intui- 
tion of the heart, the broken torrent of eloquent 
speech, the grand catholic aspiration. Every con- 
versation on the Memorial comes back to me. It 
was his conviction that our Church needed to act, 
with all its capabilities, in the vast, growing field 
of missions and of ministries for all conditions of 
men. But, more than this, he felt that the best 
way of reconciliation for our strifes was larger 
room for real work. High and low parties were 
wasting their strength in quarrel over rubrics. 
The strife, in his view, was imbittered, because both 
were hemmed within the small area of an inflexi- 
ble system." At this very hour a large part of 
the freedom which the Memorial asked is virtually 
gained. 

The language of the Memorial seems, in certain 
places, to be made vivid, and to have become itali- 
cized by the needs of the present age. How strik- 
ing is the following paragraph, as the situation 
herein described, seems to have become intensified 
by the distractions of the present : — 

" The divided and distracted state of our Amer- 



TEE PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT. Ill 

ican Protestant Christianity ; the new and subtle 
forms of unbelief adapting themselves, with fatal 
success, to the spirit of the age ; the consolidated 
forces of Romanism, bearing with renewed skill 
and activity against the Protestant faith ; and, as 
more or less the consequence of these, the utter 
ignorance of the gospel among so large a portion 
of the lower classes of our population, making a 
heathen world in our midst, — are among the con- 
siderations which induce your memorialists to 
present the inquiry, whether the period has not 
arrived for the adoption of measures to meet these 
exigencies of the times, more comprehensive than 
any yet provided for by our present ecclesiastical 
system ? In other words, whether the Protestant 
Episcopal Church, with only her present canonical 
means and appliances, her fixed and invariable 
modes of public worship, and her traditional cus- 
toms and usages, is competent to the work of 
preaching and dispensing the gospel, to all sorts 
and conditions of men, and so adequate to do the 
work of the Lord in this land and in this age ? 

This question your petitioners, for their own part, 
and in consonance with many thoughtful minds 
among us, believe must be answered in the nega- 
tive. Their memorial proceeds on the assumption 



112 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

that our Church, confined to the exercise of her 
present system, is not sufficient to the great pur- 
poses above mentioned, — that a wider door must 
be opened for admission to the gospel-ministry 
than that through which her candidates for holy 
orders are now obliged to enter. Besides such 
candidates among her own members, it is believed 
that men can be found among the other bodies of 
Christians around us, who would gladly receive 
ordination at your hands, could they obtain it 
without that entire surrender, which would now 
be required of them, of all the liberty in public 
worship to which they have been accustomed, — 
men who could not bring themselves to conform 
in all particulars to our prescriptions and customs, 
but yet sound in the faith ; and who, having the 
gifts of preachers and pastors would be able 
ministers of the New Testament." 

" In addition," the Memorial continues, " to the 
prospect of the immediate good which would thus 
be opened, an important step would be taken 
towards the effecting of a Church unity in the 
Protestant Christendom of our land. To become 
a central bond of union among Christians, who, 
though differing in name, yet hold to the one 



THE PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 113 

faith, the one Lord, and the one baptism, and who 
need only such a bond to be drawn together in 
closer and more primitive fellowship, is here 
believed to be the peculiar province and high 
privilege of your venerable body as a college of 
catholic and apostolic bishops, as such. This 
leads your petitioners to declare the ultimate de- 
sign of their memorial; which is, to submit the 
practicability, under your auspices, of some eccle- 
siastical system, broader and more comprehensive 
than that which you now administer, surrounding 
and including the Protestant Episcopal Church as it 
now is, — leaving that Church untouched, — iden- 
tical with that Church in all its great principles, 
yet providing for as much freedom in opinion, 
discipline, and worship, as is compatible with the 
essential faith and order of the gospel. To define 
and act upon such a system, it is believed, must, 
sooner or later, be the work of an American cath- 
olic episcopate." 

There are two striking points in Dr. Muhlen- 
berg's explanation of this Memorial. The first of 
these is his repeated demand for a council or a 
congress of churches. This was long before the 
successful termination of the venture of the Amer- 
ican Episcopal Church Congress ; so that we have 



114 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

to-day a precedent for this action, which was not 
known in the day when the Memorial was writ- 
ten. The second point which his seer-like mind 
seized upon, far in advance of the slowly plodding 
masses of the Church, was the question of ordina- 
tion. Concerning the difficulties in the way to a 
uniformity of ordination he says : — 

" The only possible way of removing the obsta- 
cle appears to be this : In a council of representa- 
tives from the various churches, assembled to 
debate the matter, let it be agreed to adopt that 
form of ordination, or conveyance of the external 
commission to the ministry, which all believe to be 
sufficient, and not repugnant to the word of Grod. 

In order to accomplish this, there must be no 
inquiry which ordination is the most apostolical, 
or which the most like that of the primitive 
Church, or which the most excellent ; for on these 
questions every one would have his own views, 
and of course would contend for them ; and thus 
there would be a repetition of the old and endless 
controversies with which the Church has long 
enough been perplexed. The single point to be 
determined should be, what form of ordination is 
acknowledged to be valid by all, and may be 
received by all without any sacrifice of conscience. 



THE PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 115 

If no such ordination can be found, union is impos- 
sible. If there cannot be a cordial admission of 
the due authority of one another's ministry by the 
several churches, it is evident they must remain 
asunder. But the requisite ordination, it is be- 
lieved, may be found. Let Episcopalians, Presby- 
terians and Congregationalists meet harmoniously, 
and compare their views. Let them canvass the 
question in the spirit of brotherly love, and hon- 
estly endeavor to discover some ground of peace 
and union. Let them consent to substitute, in 
place of what they now prefer, any form of ordi- 
nation in which all could conscientiously unite, 
and they would not be long in coming to a deci- 
sion." 

In a note to this passage he further adds, — 
"The question of the sufficiency of ordination could 
not be determined by the plurality of voices in the 
council ; for the conscience of no one must be vio- 
lated. The majority could not change the minor- 
ity's views of truth. The problem to be solved is, 
what is expedient in the exigency, and lawful in 
the eyes of all. Any arguments of divine origin or 
superior antiquity would only throw the council 
into interminable discussion." 

A suggestion, in passing, upon this vexing ques- 



116 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

tion is here made ; viz., whether the power and 
value of a genuine ordination for a reconstructed 
ministry may not, after all, be found to inhere in a 
syndicate or ecclesiastical commission, in which a 
clerical member of each religious body shall con- 
tribute his special form of ordination, by the lay- 
ing-on of hands. 

But this can only be brought to pass in exact 
proportion to our sense of need, and in the inverse 
ratio of the pressure from the Church of Rome and 
the forces of unbelief. Such was this memorial 
movement over which the strong personality of the 
saintly yet practical Muhlenberg still hovers to- 
day with an undimned and fascinating power. 

We pass on to another contribution to this sub- 
ject : — 

"Early in 1874, Bishop Coxe published a vol- 
ume on unity, entitled * Apollos ; or, the Way of 
God,' which has been often found helpful, perhaps 
even more so in England than here. In this book, 
Christians of other communions, — courteously rep- 
resented under the image of Apollos, the 'elo- 
quent man and mighty in the Scriptures,' sitting 
for a time at the feet of the tent-makers, Aquila 
and Priscilla — are invited, like their prototype, to 
learn i the way of God more perfectly.' The true 



THE PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 117 

teacher, however, is to be the Bible, especially in 
passages somewhat neglected, and supplying 'com- 
plementary truths,' the right use of which will 
disclose God's way in its fulness. This process 
should bring about a general approach to primitive 
Christianity ; and it is implied that our system, to 
which we ourselves are not wholly faithful, is 
essentially scriptural and primitive. But the sum- 
mons to accept it is not uttered. ' The conditions 
of modern catholicity,' says Bishop Coxe, l do not 
permit me to speak as I must in the days of 
Cyprian' (p. 253). It has been common for us to 
expect s our apostolic claims to win over the 
thoughtful and educated ; ' but there is much to 
discourage such expectations (265-66). God may 
have purposes for America which we do not dream 
of. ' We live in circumstances ... in which the 
divine compassion may fairly be invoked to revive 
the work of unity, by extraordinary developments 
of Providence.' None the less must we bear our 
witness to all that God has shown us (270-71). 
The absence of definite proposals for unification 
is in harmony with the tone of the book, in which 
we seem to hear one, who has pleaded in vain for 
peace, saying humbly, if not sadly, 4 Let God teach 
us all how to be at peace.' 



118 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

" Five years later, Bishop Coxe published a short 
paper on ' Church Unity ' in the \ Church Review ' 
(May-June, 1879). Two or three sentences must 
suffice : ' Providence seems to indicate that our 
greatest power for good, just now, lies in making 
clear to our countrymen the vast advantages of 
the Christian Year.' This 'will bring with it 
liturgical worship, and the liturgy will work out 
the rest by God's blessing. ... In another gen- 
eration there will be a great study of first princi- 
ples, and a return to a primitive spirit. God grant 
to our dear Church the grace and wisdom . . . 
meantime to watch and keep her garments, listen- 
ing to what the " Spirit saith unto the churches." : 
— Rev. Wm. G. Andrews : Standard of the Cross, 
March 29, 1883. 

The next in this succession of efforts towards 
unity was in 1870, when Rev. Dr. William R. Hunt- 
ington of Massachusetts published a little book enti- 
tled " The Church Idea : An Essay toward Unity." 
" Entertaining," he says, "no such foolish expecta- 
tion" as that American Christians are going to 
accept the minute details of the Anglican system, 
he names four points as essential. These are, 
briefly, the Bible, the Creeds, the Sacraments, and 
the Episcopate. Liturgical worship is expressly 



THE PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 119 

excluded from the list. " Why might there not be 
congregations, . . . some of them with a liturgy 
modified from the prevailing type, and some of 
them with no liturgy at all save ... in the ad- 
ministration of the two sacraments, the words of 
Christ Himself . . . ? " 

And again, thirteen years afterwards, in a ser- 
mon entitled " Twenty Years of a Massachusetts 
Rectorship," Dr. Huntington says, " The truth is, 
American Christianity is languishing to-day for 
the lack of a special enthusiasm, the inspiration of 
a definite purpose. There is a certain deadness in 
the air which all perceive." But the subject of 
Church unity acts like a tonic, and revives these 
wearied bodies. 

We pass on to the next notice of this subject. 
" In the first number of the ' Church Review ' for 
1880 is an article on l The Church's Mission of 
Reconciliation,' by Dr. John Cotton Smith. It 
appeared, therefore, about a year before his un- 
timely death, when his great influence was still 
growing, and when he was felt to speak for the 
Church more adequately than he had once been 
wrongly imagined to speak for a party. Believing 
as firmly as ever that we are charged with a ' spe- 
cial agency in building up the future Church of 



120 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

the nation,' and that this does not require an ' un- 
conditional surrender to us by our brethren, he 
says, 'Probably not much more can be done at 
present . . . than to make our own Church more 
and more truly evangelical and catholic,' and to 
get ' a more intelligent and generous estimate ' of 
others. But since the dangers which threaten 
Christianity may soon make the task of unification 
urgent, we must especially learn ' to be at unity 
among ourselves,' recognizing and accepting that 
comprehensiveness which ' is a great glory of the 
Church.' " — Rev. William G. Andrews : Stand- 
ard of the Cross, March 29, 1883. 

Church unity, then, is the dream of the Chris- 
tian thinkers and workers of to-day. The scat- 
tered sects of the Church universal have encamped 
for three centuries in the hastily-constructed booths 
which were formed at the period of the Reforma- 
tion. This scattered condition of the Church can- 
not be the ideal state of Christianity. It cannot be 
that the Church of the future is to reproduce this 
lonely experience of the Post-Reformation epoch. 

We have learned a great lesson of self-reliance 
and of discipline during this long waiting period 
of three hundred years. Energies have been 
aroused ; methods have been tested ; the faith, 



THE PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 121 

on its ethical, intellectual, and emotional sides has 
been tried, and has stood the strain of every con- 
ceivable method of development and form of 
expression. Sects to-day are tired of worn-out 
issues : a larger spirit of that God, " whose service 
is perfect freedom," is abroad. Teachers cannot 
repudiate the past ; but, at the same time, they 
want a larger future. The old measuring-lines are 
breaking clown : it is a period of change and transi- 
tion, — a period which most certainly is the pre- 
lude to a new era of construction. 

Believing in God's hand in the past, holding to 
the indications of His providence in the present, 
what can the men of to-day do for the true 
catholicity of the future ? 

Let me point out a few steps in our present 
pathway toward a practical Church unity, as the 
condensation of a large subject into a series of 
definite propositions. 

1. Begin with the practical ; not with the ideal. 
Heretofore we have begun with the far-off ideal of 
Church unity, not with the practical. Our Lord 
worked His miracle of feeding the multitude with 
the small material He had on hand. Still it was 
something to begin with ;' and when the work began 
it grew. The apostles began at the practical Je- 
rusalem, not at far-off Athens or Rome. 



122 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

2. Let fictitious forms of unity pass away. For 
myself, I believe that the " Evangelical Alliance " 
conception of Christian unity is a thing of the 
past. The spirit of unity demands a body of 
unity : a body means ribs and bones, and a struct- 
ural spinal column. A rope of sand is not a 
structure. We must begin at that which will lead 
up to a structure. 

3. Begin with the pattern of the Christian year. 
The cathedrals of Europe are built upon the pat- 
tern of the cross. The Church of Christ, as a 
unit, must be built upon the life of Christ. Al- 
ready different religious bodies keep Christmas 
and Good Friday and Easter. Fill out the rest 
cof the Church year. Let the Church at large 
recognize All Saints' Day (the memorial day of 
the dead), Advent, Whitsunday, Ascension Day, 
Trinity Sunday, and let the thought of the pulpit 
and the teaching of the Sunday School note the 
season the Church is keeping in memory of her 
Lord. This will save us from having the doctrine 
of the resurrection taught by the international 
question-papers, while the Church is keeping in 
memory the advent of her Lord. 1 

i " Let the American churches unite, aa some of them already 
• do, in the practice of nearly all the churches abroad, of observing 
ithe great historic days of Christianity which commemorate the 



THE PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 123 

4. Make the season of Lent the universal season 
of special religious interest. Change the week of 
prayer from its unmeaning position at the first 
of the year, — when bills are, more plenty than 
prayers, — to that season when the Roman, Greek, 
Anglican, and Lutheran churches are having 
special religious services as they are following 
Christ in His passion. Surely there is power in 
sympathy : there is in likeness of service. There 
is contagion in sympathy : there is power in the 
thought of fellowship. Surely this is the season 
for special services of religious interest, when 
more than two-thirds of those who are named after 
Christ are in devotion upon their knees. 

5. Let steps be taken for an inter-ecclesiastical 
Church congress. This might be held biennially 
or triennially, and on the same system as the Eng- 
lish or American Church-congress system. Let it 
be held in the spring of the year ; and let it take 
the place of the decaying May anniversaries, which 
were once such a power, but now only a memory. 

Let the representatives be clerical and lay depu- 

Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection, and the Descent 
of the Holy Ghost, and on these days making all sanctuaries to 
resound with the universal creed, — the Te Deum, the Glorias, 
the common heritage of us all, — so demonstrating both present 
union and the oneness of the Church of the past with the Church 
of to-day." — Dr. Muhlenberg's Evangelical Catholic papers: 
paper on the Lord's Supper. 



124 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

ties ; let them come to this central meeting-place, 
not to vote, or to preach, or to hold any ecclesias- 
tical functions. Let them come to tell what they 
have, and what they lack. 

Already in the Church of England, and in the 
Episcopal Church in America, great results in the 
way of practical unity have been brought to pass 
by this Church-congress system. There is no short 
and easy road to unity. It must be brought to 
pass by the survival of the strongest conviction, 
and the most permanent organization. The first 
step to be taken is to define our differences. Clear- 
ness of thought comes by all our efforts to define ; 
and it may be that a far-off, essential unity may, 
after all, cover, while it crowns, our manifold vari- 
ety of methods. 

6. Let there be room in all our plans for the 
spirit of God to work in. Who can estimate the 
power of prayer in such a field as this ? Who can 
limit the possibilities of God's spirit, when once it 
works mightily in human hearts, and makes men 
willing in the day of His power ? Who can tell 
what special blessing from the divine Comforter — 
who has been promised to us on purpose to lead us 
into all truth — may be ours when once we begin 
to take the. first right steps ? The pathway is 



THE PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT. 125 

blocked with theoretical difficulties : we cannot see 
our way more than a few steps in advance. But 
we can never take the later steps until we begin 
with the first steps : we can never reach the ideal 
until we honestly begin with the practical. 

Such are a few condensed thoughts on the sub- 
ject of the first steps towards practical Church 
unity. We must begin with what we have : we 
must not surrender our past heritage, only we 
must not insist on carrying all the baggage — the 
" impedimenta " of our forefathers — into the long- 
expected promised land. Honest effort, prayer, 
faith, a firm grip upon the essentials, a willingness 
to be taught, and a large-heartedness, will bring 
our weary feet at last into " a large room." 

There is a reserve of conviction and of motive 
in this appeal which cannot now be considered. 
From that Church which is dear to all her chil- 
dren, and is historically the mother of us all, this 
message goes forth to-day. 

Is it in vain that a voice says, Cry ? 

If not, " Why then did ye despise us, that our ad- 
vice should not be had in bringing back our Icing?" * 

1 The meetings at Hartford in May, 1885, and at Cleveland in 
May, 1886, of " The American Congress of Churches," was the 
practical result of this appeal in the name of the saintly Muhlen- 
berg, sent forth on Nov. 10, 1883, the four hundredth anniversary 
of Luther's birthday. 



126 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 



CHAPTER IV. 

GROUNDS OF CHURCH UNITY. 

In the present chapter I shall put my thoughts 
into a series of consecutive propositions, in order 
to show what is meant by Church unity, and what 
the grounds of this unity really are. 

I. The human mind will never outgrow its own 
inherent tendency to reduce confusion to order. 
It has done this in theology, in politics, and in 
social science. It seeks to do so still in the de- 
partment of Church-life. As long as there is a 
heart of Africa to be explored, there will always 
be a Livingstone or a Stanley who will seek for it. 
As long as there is a north pole uu discovered, 
there will be a Franklin, a Kane, or a Greely, who 
will travel northward, undismayed by arctic ter- 
rors. As long as there is confusion in the life of 
the Church where there is a possibility of order, 
there will be minds which will struggle to solve 
the hard problem. 



GROUNDS OF CHURCH UNITY. 127 

II. The fact that this subject has always at- 
tracted the attention of logical, as well as saintly, 
minds is worthy of our attention. That which has 
interested interesting natures comes to us with a 
double weight of interest. 

III. Unity is different from union. The Union 
Army in the late war was a different element from 
the unity of the National Government today. 
Union may help to make unity, if the union ele- 
ments are sympathetic. Yet the unity of a piece 
of mosaic work is different from the unity of the 
growth of a tree. 

IV. Christian unity must appear in the light of 
a growth or sequence from opposite standpoints 
toward a common goal. Unity must be a concen- 
tric growth, not a one-sided absorption. Yet the 
loyal churchman will never break a hedge for the 
sake of making outward peace at the expense of 
inward confusion. 

V. The unity which is suggested by the concur- 
rent religious thought of to-day in this country is 
not 

(1) The unity of dogma, as was the movement 
of Pusey and Newman, nor 

(2) The unity of sentiment, as was the drift of 
the Evangelical Alliance, but is 



128 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

(3) The unity of the practical religious Ameri- 
can mind seeking for definite, available results. 

VI. This practical unity is found in the atmos- 
phere and thought of the present, and is suggested 
by these four facts : — 

(1) The running out of the sect idea in the de- 
velopment of modern Christianity. Many sects 
are already beyond the issue which gave them 
birth, as with Universalism. 

(2) The economic waste of the machinery of 
religion in our rival organizations and Church-life. 

The practical business-mind of today is appalled 
by the waste of money in our rival churches, char- 
ities, and philanthropic enterprises. 

This practical business-mind resolves the prob- 
lem of Christian unity into two divisions ; viz., 
to close out the decaying churches in our deserted 
towns in the East, and to stop the multiplication 
of warring churches in the new towns of the West, 
giving the right of way to those churches which 
have taken first possession of the place, and are ade- 
quately supplying the religious needs of the people. 

(3) The social parity of our present Church-life, 
— different members of the same family going to 
different churches, and the clergy meeting at wed- 
dings, funerals, and charity organizations. 

(4) The crying need in our land for a central 



GROUNDS OF CHURCH UNITY. 129 

stand of Christian ethics, as in the matter of di- 
vorce, temperance, and the Sunday question. 

VII. Such a practical unity would, in time, 
create a national standard, and would in so far 
lead to a national Church; just as the National 
Government rests, after all, upon the free auton- 
omy of the separate States. The keynote of it 
all is that strong and dominant American word 
which has solved a revolution and settled a rebel- 
lion, — " Federation." 

VIII. Although it is not given to the men of 
any period to see the results of that period, we can, 
at present, notice three tendencies of thought 
which are perceptibly modifying the theological 
and ecclesiastical life of to-day : — 

(1) The penetrating influence of the hypothesis 
of evolution, which in some strong way has taken 
hold of the popular mind. 

(2) The changed conception of the doctrine of 
inspiration, with the consequent loss of the Prot- 
estant standard of infallibility ; and 

(3) The centralization of power in the religious 
and socialistic forces of the age. 

IX. Three centres of authority, and only three, 
appear to-day : — 

(1) The infallibility dogma of the Church of 
Rome. 



130 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

(2) The visible definite ness of scientific materi- 
alism. 

(3) The limited, because finite, hypothesis of 
rational Christianity. 

To explain what I mean by this limited, because 
finite, hypothesis of a rational Christianity, — 
which, however, is neither rationalistic nor a char- 
acterless via media, — let me quote a passage from 
Shorthouse's story of " John Xnglesant : " — 

" ' The Church of England,' I said, seeing that 
Mr. Inglesant paused, 4 is, no doubt, a compromise, 
and is powerless to exert its discipline. It speaks 
with abated assurance ; while the Church of Rome 
never falters in its utterance, and, I confess, seems 
to me to have a logical position. If there be abso- 
lute truth revealed, there must be an inspired ex- 
ponent of it, else from age to age it could not get 
itself revealed to mankind.' * This is the Papist 
argument,' said Mr, Inglesant. ' There is only one 
answer to it — absolute truth is not revealed. There 
were certain dangers which Christianity could not, 
as it would seem, escape. As it brought down 
the sublimest teaching of Platonism to the hum- 
blest understanding, so it was compelled by this 
very action to reduce spiritual and abstract truth 
to hard and inadequate dogma. As it inculcated 



GROUNDS OF CHURCH UNITY. 131 

a sublime indifference to the things of this life, 
and a steadfast gaze upon the future, so by this 
very means it encouraged the growth of a wild, 
unreasoning superstition. From the instant the 
Founder of Christianity left the earth — perhaps 
even before — this ghastly spectre of superstition 
ranged itself side by side with the advancing faith. 
It is confined to no church or sect : it exists in all.' 

" ' But if absolute truth is not revealed,' I said, 
' how can we know the truth at all ? ' — l We cannot 
say how we know it,' replied Mr. Inglesant ; 4 but 
this very ignorance proves that we can know. We 
are the creatures of this ignorance against which 
we rebel. From the earliest dawn of existence we 
have known nothing. What thought should we 
have other than this ignorance which we have im- 
bibed from our growth, but for the existence of 
some divine principle; as when the Founder of 
Christianity said, " The kingdom of God is within 
you"?'" 

X. This basis of rational Christianity, while it 
rejects both the dogma of Roman infallibility, and 
the denials of scientific agnosticism, accepts a 
positive, definite fact in the midst of Christian 
mysteries. 

On this basis both the Anglican Church and her 



132 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

American daughter stand ; and standing there have 
already fulfilled the prophecy of Maurice, and 
have become, both by inheritance and by training, 
the leaders in this renaissance of practical Christian 
unity. 

XL To arrive at this practical unity, — which 
rests neither upon ecclesiastical dogma nor senti- 
mental affiliations, but upon the economy of moral 
force, philanthropy, and an adaption to the wants 
of the age — will require 

(1) A long period of patient preparation. 

(2) A virtual change of base in our method of 
seeking unity. 

As Grant took Vicksburg, not by a river advance 
or a land advance, but by a movement in the rear, 
so we must reach the heart of this subject, not by 
the theological advance of sect theology, or the 
ecclesiastical advance of our own favorite system, 
but by that practical and utilitarian advance which 
has been heretofore considered the rear of the sub- 
ject. 

At the first meeting of the Congress of Churches, 
held in Hartford in May, 1885, the Rev. Thomas 
K. Beecher used the following words : — 

" In a life of single isolation, your speaker has 
been forced to seek and find a foundation for faith 



GROUNDS OF CHURCH UNITY. 133 

and hope deeper than is afforded by Church, lit- 
urgy, or ceremony, however valuable or venerable. 
As he once, when a guest of Admiral Porter, and 
free of the whole ship, went down and down 
through three decks, till, on hands and knees in 
the dark, he touched the oaken planking, tense and 
trembling, and could say this ; " This supports and 
floats me above the dark profound — by this we 
are saved ; " so he has gone down through churches, 
creeds, and liturgies to find at last the truth or 
upholding of all in 4 the Holy Ghost the Com- 
forter.' " 

To this same ultimate fact of the doctrine of the 
Holy Ghost the Comforter, we must alike, in such 
a work as this, descend. We can never afford to 
despise a world, or Church, or human character, 
into which, by evident tokens, the Holy Ghost has 
seen fit to descend and abide. 

XII. Our American life shows us among the 
masses, at present, the centralization of power in 
two opposite directions : — 

(1) The creed of Rome. 

(2) The creed of Socialism. 

XIII. To meet this changing condition of mod- 
ern life, the churches of the Protestant Reformation 
must either disintegrate utterly and ran out into 



134 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

nothingness, or they must come together and seek 
a higher plane for a new lease of power. 

If to this position the theoretical objection is 
made, that this is not " good churchmanship," the 
practical answer is found in the fact that soldiers 
by nature grow tired of the endless reverberation 
of the tatoo-drum, and that a healthful sortie^ now 
and then, is better than whole years of " barrack 
churchmanship." 

XIV. But it is objected, 

(1) That this is not a " Church " position, and 
that Catholic dogma alone is the only antidote to 
modern doubt. To this I answer : — 

The doubt of to-day goes deeper down than the 
dogmas of the Fathers ever went, and must be met 
by a combination of the living forces of Christen- 
dom wherever found, and not merely by any one 
phase of opinion. 

Let me quote, in this connection, the words of 
James Martineau on the position of John Henry 
Newman, in the former's celebrated essay on 
"Personal Influences on Our Present Theology." 

" Whence arises," he says, " that strange mixture 
of admiration and distrust of which most hearers 
and readers of John Henry Newman are conscious ? 
Often as he carries us away by his close dialectic, 



GROUNDS OF CHURCH UNITY. 135 

his wonderful readings of the human heart, his 
tender or indignant fervor, there remains a small, 
dark speck of misgiving, which we never can wipe 
out. The secret, perhaps, lies in this — that his 
own faith is an escape from an alternative scepti- 
cism, which receives the veto, not of his reason, 
but of his will. He has, after all, the critical, 
not the prophetic, mind. He wants immediateness 
of religious vision. Instead of finding his eye 
clearer, and his foot firmer the deeper he sinks 
toward the ultimate ground of trust, he hints that 
the light is precarious, and that your step may 
chance on the water or the rock in that abysmal 
realm. 

" He loves to work in the upper strata of the 
minds with which he deals, detecting their incon- 
sistencies, balancing their wants, satisfying them 
with the mere coherence and relative sufficiency of 
their belief, but encouraging them to shrink from 
the last questionings. 

" With himself he sometimes goes deeper, and 
descends toward the bases of all belief; but evi- 
dently with less of assurance as his steps pass down. 

" His certainties are on the surface : his insecuri- 
ties are below. He seems to say within himself, 
4 There is no bottom to these things that I can find ; 



136 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

we must, therefore, put one there, and only mind 
that it be sufficient to hold them, in supposing it to 
be real.' " 

Catholic dogma has its own legitimate sphere of 
defence. And for this we are thankful. But 
dogma alone is inadequate to the manifold ex- 
pression of modern doubt. 

(2) It is objected that this is not an " orthodox " 
position, since the creed-limitations of the Evan- 
gelical Alliance are not recognized. 

To this the answer is, The Evangelical Alliance 
has virtually failed ; and the time has come for a 
more positive, because more practical, attempt at 
unity. 

XV. The grounds for Christian unity at the 
present time are found in the following facts : — 

(1) That the Holy Ghost brings forth divine 
results in the Church at large, regardless of man- 
made measuring-lines. 

(2) That the Holy Ghost and the Zeit Geist — 
a very strong combination — are alike leading the 
thoughts of Christian people to this subject. 

(3) That the bleating of the sheep in opposite 
folds to get near together, which we hear on all 
sides, is the great discovery of the Christian life 
and thought of to-day. 



GROUNDS OF CHURCH UNITY. 137 

(4) That the policy of absorption and the policy 
of repression having alike failed, the policy of 
growth from the basis of practical co-operation 
remains to be tried. 

(5) That the problem of ecclesiastical recon- 
struction cannot be formulated in advance. It 
must be evolved out of the new life of the Church 
in its new epochs and new surroundings. 

Vinet says in one place : " It may be that the 
Christianity of the future will show us that we 
have been hugging a delusion of which we shall 
be thoroughly ashamed." 

(6) That the suggestions in such writings as 
Dr. Muhlenberg's Memorial Papers, with his scheme 
of a general commission on re-ordination, together 
with the suggestions of the practical minds of the 
present age, will help the Church to give expres- 
sion to its new life in the future, as it has never 
lacked ability to do in the days that are past. 

(7) And lastly in this group of facts: viz., — 
(a) That we can but take the first right step, 

and wait there until the next step is shown. 

(6) That we must leave room in all our plans 
for the working of that unknown factor — the 
power of the Spirit of God. 

(<?) That the convictions of one age frequently 



138 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

cease to be the convictions of the next age ; and 
that it is in the running out of old lines and the 
discovery of new ones that the Church's pathway 
of progress is made plain. 

(cT) That in all our efforts we must remember 
that the future is only the sequence of the past, 
and is always a development from the past, never 
the mere reproduction of it. 

In closing this chapter let me add, that if the 
mind of the Church of the present says of its 
workers, who are laying their hands upon the fu- 
ture, " Behold, this dreamer cometh," I beg to 
remind all such of another point in that far-off 
Bible story ; viz., that the very men who called 
their brother a dreamer in Goshen, were the same 
men who, in after years, were fed by the corn which 
he had saved for them in Egypt ; for the pit into 
which they threw him so readily, was the unseen 
pathway to those hidden resources by which they 
and their families were saved. 

But this argument on paper is not all that is left 
to us to-day. The spirit which is making for 
unity has already established a few strong prece- 
dents, — such as St. Louis, Hartford, Lanesbor- 
ough, Cleveland, and Pittsfield, — whose story 
cannot be told in this chapter ; and there are more 
developments to follow. 



GROUNDS OF CHURCH UNITY. 139 

This spirit is working to the front in many lines 
of Church life and thought. It is in the air, and 
is making itself felt in strong thought and a quick- 
ened life. 

And it is of such a spirit as this that we can 
say, in the words of Matthew Arnold, as he stood 
by the graves of the buried dead in Haworth 
churchyard : — 

" Hail to the spirit which dared 
Trust its own thoughts, before yet 
Echoed her back by the crowd! 
Hail to the courage which gave 
Voice to its creed, ere the creed 
Won consecration from time! " 






140 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 



CHAPTER V. 

AN APPEAL TO THE CHUECH OF OUR FATHERS. 

In the light of the recent growth and develop- 
ment of the Episcopal Church ; in view of the un- 
doubted fact of leadership as the oldest daughter 
of a reformed Christianity, which is generously 
accorded to her by those who profess and call them- 
selves Christians in this new land of ours ; in the 
presence of great responsibilities and of future 
capabilities, — a voice of earnest and solemn appeal 
is herewith sent forth to the bishops and minis- 
ters of our Church, and especially to the sober, 
common-sense, practical business minds of our 
unbiassed laity, not to risk all that has been 
bequeathed to us, and all that we have earned 
through a hard-worn development, by the throwing 
of a gambler's chance, in the proposed change of 
the Church's name to the use, in whole or in part, 
of the word " Catholic." 

Let my words be in all moderation, " temperate 



APPEAL TO THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS. 141 

in all things," because of a reserved sense of faith 
and conviction ; but let them be none the less ear- 
nest, as we come to this place of the parting of the 
waters, where we must be one for a larger, holier 
service before us, or where a sure and inevitable 
break must be, the like of which has not been 
since the days of John Wesley. 

The line of argument of the so-called catholic 
school, which would change the present name of 
the Church, is the exact argument of the Catholic 
Apostolic Church, — commonly known as the move- 
ment of Edward Irving. The smaller the practi- 
cal area covered, the larger is the theoretical cath- 
olicity. This dwindling, dying Church of the 
apostles cries out with its latest breath, " We are 
the one holy Catholic Apostolic Church." The 
catholic school in our own Church is repeating 
this same mistake, though it is all unconscious of 
its piteous similarity. 

Two conceptions of unity, and only two, appear 
to-day. The one is the organic conception of a 
universal Church, which is the medisevalisru of 
Charlemagne revived; the other is the conception 
of federation, which is of the present, and is prac- 
tical. The great American idea is federation. 
This was the gift to our nation of that brilliant 



142 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

statesman, Alexander Hamilton. This conception 
has raised a nation into being through a revolu- 
tion, and has saved that same nation through the 
largest civil war ever recorded in history. The 
Church, when it has been strongest in history, has 
always taken on the color of the State which has 
supported it. This national idea of federation, is 
to-day knocking at the councils of our churches 
throughout the land, begging them to heed its 
winning, practical, Christian voice. It comes with 
the pressure of a wise Christian economy, and says 
to us, like wisdom crying in the market-place, 
"Unto you, O men, I call ; heed my voice and spare 
your lavish waste of money in rival missions and 
warring sects." " The united churches of the 
United States," may yet mean something more 
than an interesting subject for a popular magazine. 

All history is development. That which has 
been, is past and gone. That which is to be is 
now in germ. The path of the Church's progress 
can never be back to the bygone methods of former 
days. It never has been backward : it never can 
move in that direction, fondly as we may hope or 
dream of it, and in thus dreaming lose our hold 
upon the present. 

We can take the inspirations of the past with us, 



APPEAL TO THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS. 143 

but we cannot take the past. The Lord God has 
called the earth from the rising of the sun unto 
the going down thereof. From the East to the 
West we move. We look back to the early Church 
as if our Lord were there ; forgetting that He is 
here with us to-day, and unmindful of the fact that 
the Holy Spirit has never left this earth since His 
descent upon it at the day of Pentecost. 

A mediaeval, organic, hierarchic Church unity is 
as yet a dream, and a dream only. The disciples 
dreamed of this, but it did not come to them. God 
gave it to the world once when it was a necessity. 
That necessity has never come again. New con- 
ditions, new life, new agencies are at work to-day. 
Why should we seek the living among the dead ? 

In the light of its past history and development, 
the proposition to change the name of our historic 
Church to the word " Catholic," is the movement 
of a certain school in the Church to define that 
which is the common property of all the Church's 
children. One child wants the family name 
changed in the law courts, whether the rest of the 
family are willing or not. We may not like the 
name we now have in all particulars : it may not 
be large enough : it may not be as all-embracing as 
we could desire ; but we must grow up to a larger 



144 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

life and to larger conditions. The Protestant 
Episcopal Church may grow to be the American 
Church. But we cannot make ourselves larger by 
an act of Congress. 

It is in no narrow or partisan spirit that I plead 
for a veto upon this movement to change the name 
of the Church to the word " Catholic." The troub- 
le is that this movement to change the Church's 
name is not large enough, is not profound enough, 
savors too much of the easy methods of Charlotan- 
ism, and is a striking instance of the practical nar- 
rowness of theoretical breadth. If the name 
" Catholic " is adopted, we shall turn back hun- 
dreds who are surely coming to us as we now are ; 
and we will lose forever our hard-won gift of 
leadership. 

I am not in love with the name Protestant 
Episcopal. I want it to grow to be the American 
Episcopal, or the American National, Church. 
But that name marks the turning of a great his- 
toric epoch. We are not ashamed of the strife 
which marked that epoch: we cannot afford to 
ignore it. We know on which side of that divid- 
ing line our Church has always stood. We will 
not give away in a moment, that for which our 
fathers laid down their lives to the death. 



APPEAL TO THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS. 145 

We stand where we are to-day, because we have 
entered the valley of present peace and prosperity, 
via the gateway of historic Protestantism. No 
legislation can ever wipe that fact away. John 
Bunyan's allegory is, after all, the truth of history. 
Giant Pope is on one side of the highway ; Giant 
Pagan is upon the other side. What we want as 
God's plant in this Western world is to realize the 
American idea of a national Church, and move for- 
ward towards the plane of practical federation, 
against our triple foe of sin, Satan, and death. 

We do not want to move backward, like Heze- 
kiah's retreating sun-dial — fit symbol of a slowly 
but surely coming death — to the by-gone concep- 
tion of a past catholicity. We want to move for- 
ward, and be in reality the American National 
Church, creating our true catholicity, as we grow 
in ripeness, wisdom, and power. 

The spider weaves its web from itself: it is all- 
sufficient for the rounded pattern of its perfect 
circle. It never hunts in bygone corners for lost 
threads. In the same way the creation of a perfect 
catholicity, is from the Church's creative vitality 
to-day. It never can be found in past centuries 
or councils, where its lost threads are to be picked 
up in dusty corners. " The kingdom of God is 
within youP 



146 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

This so-called "catholic" school in our midst 
we love and honor and respect, for we are breth- 
ren ; and great has been their work for the Master. 
All honor to these earnest, faithful men ! But for 
one, I am afraid of their philosophy, and resist with 
all my power their definitions and the inferences 
drawn from them. 

These men, albeit they know it not, are to-day 
setting in motion a rising whirlpool, whose suction- 
power towards Rome is simply irresistible. 

If this earth, or any companion planet in the 
solar system, was dislodged from its orbit, it 
would rush onward madly through space, until it 
buried itself in the central, all-powerful sun. The 
inevitable law of gravitation would lead it there. 
It never would think of stopping to rest in the 
bosom of an asteroid. Gentlemen of the "catho- 
lic " school, your miniature system is, at the best, 
but a pretty little asteroid ! 

The burdened, tired souls, which are dislodged 
to-day from the basis of rational religion, as held 
by the standards of our national Church, will 
never rest content until they hug the altar of in- 
fallibility and sob themselves into peace at the 
feet of the great vicar of the Vatican. 

Who has not felt the strain of this temptation 



APPEAL TO THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS. 147 

Homewards, who never would be tempted by the 
petite model of that Anglican imitation, which 
held for a moment, but could not longer detain in 
its soft and silken meshes, the stalwart reasoning 
of John Henry Newman? The cry to-day is, Let 
us have peace ! Let us have unity ! Yes ; but if 
we have got to wrestle with the problem of what 
we are, and what our true name is, let us have 
it out on this Thermopylae pass of what we mean 
by the Church of Jesus Christ. When men want 
a hierarchy to-day, and all that goes with it, they 
know full well where it can be had in richness 
and fulness and completeness ; and the way is very 
easy to the voice of invitation which is sounded 
forth by the gentle Leo. 

But surely our mission as a Church, and our 
way towards a possible and rational supremacy, 
is on simpler, while it is on more robust and more 
thoroughly national, lines. The Anglo-Saxon blood 
in our veins beats towards an honest national 
American Church ; not towards a revived, dog- 
matic medievalism in any form. 

A new age is upon us, the like of which the 
world has never seen. The statue in New- York 
harbor is the symbol for the religious as well as 
the political world to-day. Liberty is indeed en- 



148 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

lightening the world. Europe is learning from 
America. The present is to teach the future. The 
great power of the Vatican is quick to see this 
changing condition of modern life. Rome adapts 
herself to the situation, and is honoring the Ameri- 
can branch of the Roman faith, by the most pro- 
nounced and manifest tokens of her favor. The 
Roman Catholic devotion to the American idea, is 
a most noticeable sign of our present-day life. 
How can we be so blind as to risk our leadership, 
and throw away our only chance of power, by stu- 
pidly insisting upon trying to adapt this growing, 
bustling, thinking American nation to a bygone 
phase of religious expression, — a mediaeval epoch 
which is forgotten by the masses, and is only a 
theoretical stumbling-block, insuring our inevita- 
ble fall. 

This movement to call our Church " Catholic " 
begins at the wrong end of the problem. Legis- 
lative enactment is the turret of the building ; yet 
this movement would begin with the cupola, before 
the corner-stone has been laid. 

What we ask is at the roots of this movement. 
Let us analyze it to its ultimate terms, and we shall 
find in it the following elements : — 

1. A return to by-gone methods of Church-life. 



APPEAL TO THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS. 149 

2. An ignorance of the present conditions of 
life and thought. 

3. An ignorance of the law of the progress of 
Church-life, by the development of the essential, 
through the dissolution of the non-essential. 

4. The assumption of catholicity founded upon 
the hierarchical hinge, not upon the common consent 
of the Christian consciousness. 

5. The " boast of heraldry and pomp of power," 
which in its essence is secular, and " is not of the 
father, but is of the world." 

In the light of what we have been, and of the 
way in which God has led us ; by our heritage 
from the past; by our broad comprehension and 
positive faith ; by the legacy of power, bequeathed 
to us from the three schools of Church-life already 
described ; by our hold upon our fellow Christians 
in this land to which God has led us; by the 
congress of churches, which has been our own 
Muhlenberg's vision realized ; by the prospect be- 
fore us of a practical federation of Christian work- 
ers ; by the generous declaration of the House of 
Bishops, and the gracious and ready response of 
the Connecticut Christians of the historic Church 
of New England ; by the ripeness of our Church 
for the future which awaits it; and by the loy- 



150 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

alty of all her children to our Church as it is 
to-day, — a voice going forth from a region where 
the mountains bring peace to the people, not a 
council, or a conclave, or a convocation, but only 
a passing voice sent forth from the Eternal Hills, 
begs you, O men and brethren ! as you survey your 
past, not to risk your fruitful future by your hasty 
action in the present. 

Talk not of peace, O brethren ! while you forge 
weapons of war. Speak not of unity, while you sow 
the seeds of schism. On you by your false philoso- 
phy, on you by your unconscious casuistry, must 
fall the responsibility of the great schism of the 
West, if you trifle with this vine which God by His 
providence has planted, this vine which He Him- 
self has brought out of the Egypt of the past I 

"Turn thee again, thou God of host's: look 
down from heaven, behold and visit this vine; 
and the place of the vineyard that thy right hand 
hath planted, and the branch that thou rnadest so 
strong for thyself. Turn us again, O Lord God of 
hosts; shew the light of thy countenance, and 
we shall be whole." 



APPENDIX, 



Action of the Souse of Bishops at the General 
Convention at Chicago, October, 1886. 



We do hereby solemnly declare to all whom it may 
concern, and especially to our fellow Christians of the 
different communions in this land, who in their several 
spheres have contended for the religion of Christ, 

1. Our earnest desire that the Saviour's prayer 
"that we all may be one" may, in its deepest and 
truest sense, be speedily fulfilled. 

2. That we believe that all who have been duly 
baptized with water, in the name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, are members of the 
Holy Catholic Church. 

3. That in all things of human ordering, or human 
choice, relating to modes of worship and discipline, or 
to traditional customs, this Church is ready, in the 
spirit of love and humility, to forego all preferences of 
her own. 



152 VINE OUT OF EGYPT. 

4. That this Church does not seek to absorb other 
communions, but rather, co-operating with them on the 
basis of a common faith and order, to discontinue 
schism, to heal the wounds of the body of Christ, and 
to promote the charity which is the chief of Christian 
graces, and the visible manifestation of Christ to the 
world. 

But, furthermore, we do hereby affirm that the Chris- 
tian unity, now so earnestly desired by the memori- 
alists, can be restored only by the return of all Christian 
communions to the principles of unity exemplified by 
the undivided Catholic Church, during the first ages of 
its existence ; which principles we believe to be the 
substantial deposit of Christian faith and order com- 
mitted by Christ and the apostles to the Church, unto 
the end of the world, and therefore incapable of com- 
promise or surrender by those who have been ordained 
to be its stewards and trustees lor the common and 
equal benefit of all men. As inherent parts of this- 
sacred deposit, and therefore as essential to the 
restoration of unity among the divided branches of 
Christendom, we account the following : to wit, — 

1. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- 
ment as the revealed word of God. 

2. The Mcene Creed as the sufficient statement of 
the Christian faith. 

3. The two sacraments — Baptism, and ihe Supper 
of the Lord — ministered with unfailing use of Christ's 



APPENDIX. 153 

words of institution, and of the elements ordained by 
Him. 

4. The local episcopate, locally adapted in the 
methods of its administration to the var} T ing needs of 
the nations and people called of God into the unity of 
His Church. 

Furthermore, deeply grieved by the sad divisions 
which afflict the Christian Church in our own land, we 
hereby declare our desire and readiness, so soon as 
there shall be any authorized response to this declara- 
tion, to enter into brotherly conference with all or any 
Christian bodies seeking the restoration of the organic 
unity of the Church, with a view to the earnest study 
of the conditions under which so priceless a blessing 
might happily be brought to pass. 



THE LATEST THEOLOGICAL WORKS. 



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